Preface

THE way of life with which this book deals flourished for 2000 years
of the most formative period of human history, and it would require far
more than the space available even touch upon every significant aspect
of this subject. I have there,-e had to confine myself to a more modest
task. What I have empted has been to give an introduction to the
subject by a sketch Babylonian and Assyrian life at a few key-points,
seen in the context of the historical setting.

I need hardly point out to my professional colleagues that this ok
is not written for them; therefore, if, in using the original sources,
I have chosen, for the sake of English idiom, to translate a singular
by a plural, or to alter a tense, I trust they will not turn and rend
me. My main purpose will be served if I succeed in convincing some of
my readers, amongst the many now interested in ancient world, that
Babylonian and Assyrian civilisation is not wholly alien to our own.

Although I have been able in many cases to suggest sources for
illustrations, the credit and responsibility for the final selection
and treatment of the illustrations belong, not to me as author, but to
the talented artist, Mrs H. Fairfield, and to Mr P. Kemmis Betty.

H. W. F. SAGGS

Chapter I

A FORGOTTEN CIVILISATION

FOR over 2000 years one of the greatest of human achievements, the
civilisation of Babylonia and Assyria, lay buried and almost forgotten
beneath the soil of the land we now know as Iraq (earlier called
Mesopotamia). There remained of it only certain accounts, of doubtful
reliability, in Greek literature, together with some Biblical
statements, perhaps biased, about the Assyrians, and more dubious
traditions of a much earlier period in a land called Shinar. In Shinar,
according to the Biblical account, had been built the tower of Babel;
here too had lived the sole surviving family of the great Flood, whilst
somewhere in this region, at the beginning of man's history, had been
the mythical Garden of Eden.

Occasional travellers, attracted by
the magic of the names of Babylon and Nineveh, had visited the great
ancient mounds of Iraq from the time of the Crusades onwards. Some left
accounts of their journeys and their speculations, and even brought
back to Europe relics-inscribed bricks and the like-of the ancient
cities. The vast ruins of Nineveh, standing across the Tigris from the
city of Mosul, had probably never entirely lost their identification in
local tradition, and even by European travellers they were recognised
for what they were as early as the twelfth century A.D. The site of
Babylon, however, remained longer in doubt, though travellers did not
hesitate to identify one or other of the gigantic brick structures
still standing in South Iraq with the ill-starred tower of Babel. The
precise location of Babylon was not definitely known until the
seventeenth century.

The first man to make a more scientific examination of the ancient
mounds of Iraq was Claudius James Rich. Rich was a young Englishman,
with no great advantages of birth, who at the age of twenty-one had
risen by his own merits, in particular his linguistic ability, to be
the Resident of the East India Company in Baghdad, a post of
considerable responsibility and pomp. In 1811 he took the opportunity
of paying a visit to Babylon, where in the course of a fruitful ten
days he made a survey of the whole great site, and employed workmen to
undertake some crude excavations. The resulting collection of inscribed
bricks, cuneiform clay tablets and cylinder seals, together with Rich's
Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon, published in 1812, may properly be
taken to mark the beginning of the science of Assyriology. Rich made a
second visit some years later, publishing a Second Memoir on Babylon
(1818). There is a reference to the stir caused by these new
discoveries in Byron's lines in Don Juan, where the poet speaks of

... some infidels, who don't

Because they can't, find out the very spot

Of that same Babel, or because they won't

(Though Claudius Rich, Esquire, some bricks has got,

and written lately two memoirs upon't).

At Rich's premature death from cholera in 1821 his collection of
antiquities was sold to the British Museum, where the cuneiform
material became the basis of the great Assyriological collection there,
now recognised as one of the finest in the world.

Apart from a sounding at Babylon in
1827, after Rich's pioneer work there were no further excavations in
Iraq until the 1840s, although travellers continued to visit and record
their impressions of the ancient mounds (or tells) of the country.

The year 1840 marked the first arrival in Iraq of another young man
who in the course of the next eleven years was to put the
archaeological side of the new science of Assyriology on a sound
foundation. The young man was Henry Austen Layard,1 then
twenty-three. Layard, who
had failed to make good in his uncle's highly respectable firm of
solicitors, was on his way overland to an opening which had been
promised for him in Ceylon. Deeply impressed by the ancient mounds of
Iraq and fascinated by the life and society of the Near and Middle East
in general, he lingered in that area as long as he could and finally
abandoned his original intention, not without some anxiety as to his
uncle's possible reactions. His knowledge of languages, the charm of
his personality, his intelligence and industry, and his courage,
endurance, and taste for adventure, had combined to give him
considerable first-hand knowledge of Oriental politics, and he now had
hopes of a career in the diplomatic service. In this, however, he was,
through the stubbornness of the Foreign Office, for some years
disappointed, even though he managed to be of considerable assistance
privately to the British Ambassador in Constantinople. The latter,
although unable to obtain early official status for Layard, did give
him personal and financial support, and in 1845 encouraged him to
undertake excavations at the mound of Nimrud, about twenty miles south
of Mosul. Successfully overcoming both official obstruction and
financial and practical difficulties, Layard opened up the hidden
palaces of one of the Assyrian capitals, not (as he at first supposed)
Nineveh, but Calah, mentioned in Genesis x 12. He returned to
England and published an account of his work in 1849, when it at once
created a nationwide sensation.

Layard was not quite first in the field of large-scale excavation in
Iraq, for he had an eminent predecessor in the French Consul Paul
Botta, who began excavations in 1842. Botta, described by a
contemporary as 'a scientific man but a d--d bad consul', was a very
good friend to Layard, who before 1845 received much stimulus towards
archaeological research by the fact that Botta gave him free access to
his own reports as they passed through Constantinople.

Whilst, like Layard, Botta carried out
minor archaeological excavations at several places, the site of his
principal work was Khorsabad, north-east of Mosul. Both these great
pioneers also at different times dug at Kuyunjik, the site of Nineveh
itself. All three sites--Khorsabad, Kuyunjik, and Nimrud--turned out to
be ruins of capital cities of the period of Assyrian greatness between
the ninth and seventh centuries B.C., which coincided largely with the
period of the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah, well known from the
Old Testament. It was the sidelights the new discoveries shed upon
Biblical history, as well as the striking nature of many of the early
finds themselves-colossal winged bulls and lions (4), now impressive
features of the British Museum and the Louvre, together with vivid
scenes carved in low relief on limestone friezes-which won the
immediate interest of the general public of Great Britain and France.
It was also the fact that all the main early finds came from Assyria
that led to the new science being called 'Assyriology', a name still
retained, although it is now recognised that Assyria formed only a
part, and not even the most important part, of the whole civilisation
concerned.

Winged bulls and limestone friezes, spectacular though they may be,
would not by themselves have given us much insight into the
civilisation of the people who left these things behind. Fortunately,
along with these objects, there were, either carved on the bulls, lions
or friezes, or impressed upon cylinders or tablets of clay,
inscriptions in unknown characters built up from wedge-shaped (or
'cuneiform') strokes. It was the decipherment of this cuneiform script
which ultimately opened up to the modern world the whole of Babylonian
and Assyrian thought and life.

A few cuneiform inscriptions had been published long before the
excavations of Botta and Layard, and work upon these had provided the
key which was to unlock the new material. In the ruins of the palaces
of the ancient Persian kings, particularly at Persepolis, are many
well-preserved cuneiform inscriptions on stone. Portions of these were
copied by a number of travellers as curiosities, but it was not until
the late eighteenth century, when more careful and complete copies had
been made, that it was noticed that these inscriptions from the Persian
palaces contained three different systems of writing (8), and that one
of them was the system found on the inscribed bricks from the region of
Babylon.

There are basically three different
ways in which languages can be committed to writing. The most primitive
is to have one sign (called an 'ideogram' or 'logogram') for each word
or idea. If such a system is to be of any widespread use, it will
obviously require hundreds, if not thousands, of distinct signs.
Chinese writing is an example of this. The second possible writing
system is to have a separate sign, not for each word, but for each
syllable. Since the number of possible syllables in a language is far
less than the number of possible words, such a system will require far
fewer signs. For ancient Near Eastern languages using this system of
writing the number of syllabic signs needed was not less than a
hundred. The third basic method of writing is the one we commonly use,
the alphabetic system, in which the principal sounds occurring in a
language are each given a separate symbol. The number of symbols will
vary slightly from one alphabet to another, according to the sounds
commonly occurring in a particular language and the efficiency with
which these sounds are distinguished in writing, but almost always the
number of symbols in an alphabet will be between twenty and fifty.

In the case of the three scripts from Persepolis, one of them proved
to have less than fifty different signs, and so could reasonably be
taken as alphabetic. Some of the texts thus taken as alphabetic were
short inscriptions carved above the heads of reliefs of figures
obviously representing kings, and this suggested that such inscriptions
might contain a royal name and titles. A clue to the decipherment was
that it was known from later Persian sources that the usual form of the
title of the Persian kings was 'So-and-so, the Great King, King of
Kings, son of So-and-so'. Working from such data, a German scholar, G.
F. Grotefend, was able as early as 1802 to make considerable progress
in the decipherment of the alphabetic cuneiform script, assigning
correct values to nearly one-third of the alphabet. Between then and
the 1830s a number of scholars worked on the script, with varying
degrees of success, so that in later years there arose at one time a
sharp controversy about who deserved the major credit for the final
decipherment. Several scholars certainly took a share in it, but it is
clear that a considerable part of the credit is due to yet another
young Englishman, Henry Creswicke Rawlinson.

Rawlinson, a good classical scholar
and a fine athlete, held an appointment in the East India Company, and
in 1835, at the age of twenty-five, was posted to duties in Persia,
about twenty miles from the famous Rock of Bisitun (or Behistun). The
Rock of Bisitun, on the main ancient route from Babylon to Ecbatana
(the ancient capital of the Medes) rises sheer almost 1700 feet, and on
it, about 300 feet up, the ancient Persian king Darius 1 (522-486 B.C.)
had a monument carved showing him overcoming his enemies (9).
Accompanying the sculptures were carved inscriptions which (as we now
know) were in three languages, Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian, in
the three scripts already mentioned. Although many people had seen the
sculptures and inscriptions from below, these details about the
languages in which they were written were of course known to no one
when Rawlinson arrived in Persia. He was already interested in the
problem of decipherment, and saw in the inscriptions at Bisitun, far
longer than the only ones to which scholars had had access up to that
time, the most promising material for a complete solution. By climbing
up the side of the cliff to a narrow ledge overhanging a drop of over a
hundred feet, Rawlinson was able, in the course of several visits
during 1836 and 1837, to copy about 200 lines of the particular
inscription (now known to be in the language called Old Persian) which
was written in the alphabetic script. Rawlinson had already arrived at
some of the letters of the Old Persian alphabet by the same kind of
method as that employed by Grotefend. The new material enabled
Rawlinson to decipher virtually the whole alphabet, and by his
knowledge of later languages related to Old Persian he was able by 1839
to give a substantially accurate summary of the meaning of the whole of
the 200 lines. Thus the Old Persian script and language had been
largely deciphered before 1840.

There still remained the even more difficult task, the decipherment
of the scripts and languages of the Elamite and Akkadian versions of
the trilingual texts. By 1846 Rawlinson and others had made substantial
progress with Elamite, but little was known about Akkadian writing. The
credit for the earliest substantial success in the decipherment of
Akkadian cuneiform goes to an Irish parson named Edward Hincks.
However, others, including Rawlinson, were not far behind, and by 1850
it was possible for these scholars to make out the general sense of
Akkadian texts of an historical nature. None the less, the learned
world was not fully convinced. For this reason, a test was made in
1856-7, four of the leading scholars, Hincks, Rawlinson, Oppert and Fox
Talbot, being set to prepare independent translations of a long newly
discovered text. When it was found that the result of the four
substantially agreed, there could be no further doubt that the script
and language of Akkadian had been deciphered.

The great difficulty in deciphering Akkadian lay not mainly in the
language itself, but in the manner of writing it. The script, in its
later form, was a mixture of two of the writing systems mentioned
above, some of the signs being ideograms and others syllograms (i.e.
signs denoting syllables). It was further complicated by the fact that
some signs could be used either as ideograms or as syllograms, whilst
some syllograms might denote several completely different syllables
within the same text. Thus the one sign could (at one period
and in a single text) be either the ideogram for 'day' or a syllable to
be pronounced ud or tu or tam or par or
likh or khish. To complicate matters further, several
different signs might represent the same syllable: thus either
or could occur for the syllable u in certain
positions in a word.

The initial decipherment of Akkadian was thus no simple matter.
However, once this had been achieved, further progress was merely a
matter of perseverance and time. It was soon recognised that the
writing system could not have been invented for Akkadian, and, as was
expected by some of the pioneers, scholars found amongst the cuneiform
inscriptions from Babylonia texts in another language, as different
from Akkadian as Turkish is from English. This language, today known as
Sumerian (from the race which originally spoke it) has only become well
understood in the last forty years, and there is still much dispute
about the details of the interpretation of Sumerian texts. Most
Akkadian texts, on the other hand, can now be understood as well as the
Hebrew of the Old Testament.

Whilst the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians had
sometimes carved inscriptions on stone monuments, the usual writing
materials consisted of lumps of clay, most commonly of a size to be
held in the hand, but frequently larger (43). Layard's critics have
alleged that at first he treated such pieces of inscribed clay as
merely oddly decorated pottery, but certainly before he left Nimrud in
June 1847 he knew what they were. Later, at Kuyunjik, Layard and his
successors found, and brought back for the British Museum, the remains
of several libraries of cuneiform clay tablets collected by Assyrian
kings. The 25,000 fragments concerned still form the most important
single collection of cuneiform material known: it is indeed so
comprehensive that some Assyriologists, irreverently referred to by
their colleagues as 'Kuyunjikologists', are able to make important
contributions to research whilst virtually limiting their interests to
this particular collection (6, 7).

Layard retired from archaeology in 1851, going into politics, but
his work at Kuyunjik and elsewhere, on behalf of the British Museum,
was carried on by others. The French had been active in excavation from
the beginning, and Germany and America began major excavations in the
late 1880s. Many other nations followed suit, and Assyriology, both in
its archaeological aspects and in the study of cuneiform material, has
become a field in which inter national co-operation is a reality. There
is seldom a year in which there are not three or four expeditions to
Iraq from different countries, and at the Rencontre Assyriologique
Internationale, held annually, one may meet delegates from Great
Britain, America, France, Germany (East and West), Czechoslovakia,
Yugoslavia, Russia, Turkey, Finland, Holland, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel,
Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and Denmark, all joined by the desire to
deepen knowledge of ancient Mesopotamian civilisation.

THE LAND AND RACES OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA

Babylonia and Assyria covered approximately the region which today
is known as Iraq, though some places important in the ancient
civilisation are to be found in Turkey and Syria. Iraq is a land which
depends for its life, and in part for its physical existence, upon its
great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris. Without these rivers
two-thirds of the country would be an and desert, whilst it its these
rivers which have created, by their silt deposits, the whole region, a
great alluvial plain, which extends from about 100 miles north of
Baghdad down to the Persian Gulf. This alluvial soil can be, under the
influence of the sun and adequate irrigation, of astonishingly high
fertility, and it was in the alluvial plain that the ancient
civilisation had its origin and flowering. East and north of the
alluvial plain the land rises into chains of foothills, and finally
into mountains of up to 10,000 feet on the borders of Persia and
Turkey. To the west of the Euphrates the land merges into the Syrian
and Arabian deserts.

It was the southern part of this land, roughly from the latitude of
Baghdad, which in ancient times was Babylonia, the northern part being
Assyria. The whole is sometimes referred to as Mesopotamia, from the
Greek for 'between the rivers', though the Greeks themselves used this
term of rather a rent area.

The story of Mesopotamian civilisation, and with it the story of our
own civilisation, begins a little over 5000 years ago, in the hot
swamps of South Iraq. A strange people, the Sumerians, whose ;precise
origin is still unknown, had come (whether by land or sea we are not
certain) from somewhere to the east or north-east to ,settle in the
region around the head of the Persian Gulf. This region deficient in
some of the basic materials of civilised existence, such as hard
timber, stone, and metal ores, but is rich in three :hers, namely,
sunshine, water, and mud. It was out of mud that the Sumerians built
their civilisation, and it is mud, in the form of scribed clay tablets,
which enables us to see back almost to the beginning of the 5000 years
which separate us from the original Sumerian settlement.

South Iraq was not empty when the Sumerians arrived. There ready
existed thriving villages, some of which became the basis 'later
Sumerian cities. Archaeology shows that the newcomers opted much of the
building, agricultural and irrigational technology of the people
already there, though at the same time they introduced or invented
other processes and techniques
not previously found in the country. It has been suggested that the
Sumerians arrived in the land as warlike nomadic shepherds, imposing
themselves upon the settled peoples as a ruling caste. Other scholars
think that the Sumerians were themselves peasant farmers, perhaps
driven from a homeland in Central Asia by climatic changes. The
evidence is scanty and ambiguous, and at present not sufficient for us
to make a decision.

The characteristic form into which Sumerian society grew was, from
early in the third millennium B.C., the walled city at the centre of a
small city-state, with a number of dependent villages in the
surrounding countryside. It should perhaps be emphasised that the basis
of the Sumerian city was agriculture and not industry. The two most
prominent features of the Sumerian city were its irrigation system and
its main temple built on a terrace. This terrace-temple in course of
time developed to become the stepped tower known as the ziggurrat (p.
88). The city temple might be of considerable splendour with stone
foundations, but most of the human occupants of the city still lived in
small mud huts.

In theory the city was the estate of the local deity, whose chief
human representative was known as the En; this functionary
could apparently be either a man or a woman. Originally control of the
city-state had been in the hands of all free citizens, who arrived at
decisions on major policy in public council. There are always some
activities, however, which require on-the-spot decisions, and so the
citizens came to appoint a man called the Ensi to direct and
coordinate agricultural operations, whilst in times of crisis they
would choose a king (Sumerian Lugal, literally 'Big Man') as
military leader (5). Although both Ensi and Lugal were
originally elected, once a man had been appointed there would be a
strong tendency for his position to become permanent and hereditary,
and also for the various leading positions in the city-state to be
gathered Into one person. Thus the famous Gilgamesh of Erech (p. 45)
was both En and Lugal, and a number of other Sumerian
rulers were Lugal and Ensi. As a result the original
democratic organisation gave way to a system of rulers and ruled.

Until recently it was generally believed that in the early Sumerian
period the temple owned all the land of the city-state, but it has now
been shown that the temple share amounted to perhaps no more than
one-eighth of the whole. The rest of the land was originally owned by
families or clans collectively, and could only be sold by agreement of
all the prominent members of the family or clan. The buyers of such
land would be members of what was Coming to be the ruling class or
nobility, and these people would thereby come to own land as private
property in addition to what they held as family property. Such land
would be worked by poor landless freemen. By such means there developed
a social order in which there were three principal classes, that is,
the nobility, the ordinary freemen, and the dependent freemen generally
called 'clients'. A fourth class was constituted by slaves, who were
mainly

It has already been mentioned that the Sumerians were not the first
inhabitants of what we now call Babylonia. Amongst their predecessors
it is possible that one group was Semitic. If this was In fact so, this
Semitic element would represent the first stage of a Movement of
peoples which has been going on throughout history. The use of the term
'Semitic' here requires explanation. The word has an unfortunate modern
history because of its misuse by the Hitler regime, and for that reason
many people are nervous of using it at all, except as a term covering
certain languages. In the latter sense it denotes a closely knit group
of languages which include, amongst modern tongues, Hebrew and Arabic,
and, amongst ancient ones, Akkadian and Aramaic. However, in the
context of ancient history, it is also perfectly legitimate to use
the term 'Semites' in a racial sense, of a community of peoples having
single point of origin in prehistoric times. The ancient Semites (using
the term as defined) were a people whose original home, as far as we
know at present, was the interior of Arabia. From the end of the last
Ice Age at about 8000 B.C. down to the present day Arabia (like much of
the rest of the Near East) has suffered from relentless soil erosion,
with the result that the desert area has extended and the population
the land would support has become continually smaller. Throughout
history the overflow from this population has been moving outwards to
settle, usually in peaceful families, less commonly in larger warlike
groups, on the more fertile fringes of the great desert.

One reason for guessing that there may
have been Semites in South Iraq when
the
Sumerians first arrived is that some of the earliest Sumerian
inscriptions contain words undoubtedly taken over from Semitic speech.
Unfortunately, such evidence is not conclusive, because we do not know
whether the period of contact between Sumerians and Semites which
resulted in such borrowings was a matter of a few years or of
centuries. The earliest certain movement of Semitic peoples into Iraq
began in the second quarter of the third millennium (i.e. after 2750
B.C.), from which period there is evidence of a group, whom we know as
the Akkadians, moving into northern Babylonia from the Jebel Sinjar
area in East Syria.

The growing strength of the Semitic element in the population
culminated in the coming into power of an Akkadian dynasty. In northern
Babylonia the greatest Sumerian centre was the city of Kish, and the
last King of Kish had as chief minister a man whom we know under the
Semitic name of Sharrum-kin or Sargon, meaning 'true king', though this
could hardly have been his original name. Sargon had founded a city
called Agade (exact whereabouts still unknown), and when the King of
Kish was overthrown by a Sumerian ruler from farther south, Sargon took
over the reins of government and gained control of the whole of the
land later known as Babylonia (2371 B.C.). Sargon's descendants reigned
for over a century, and we refer to this dynasty as the Dynasty of
Agade, or, using the Semitic spelling of the name, the Dynasty of
Akkad. (This is the ultimate origin of the term 'Akkadian' already used
in several different contexts.)

Sargon ultimately extended his conquests up the Euphrates to North
Syria, and possibly even into Asia Minor. He also conquered Elam to the
east of Babylonia, and gained control of northern Iraq, the area later
known as Assyria. In one of the cities of Assyria there has been found
a fine bronze mask which may have represented Sargon himself (13).
Sargon's economic and political control of this unprecedently large
area produced a marked rise in the standard of living of Babylonia, so
that this period was remembered in tradition as a golden age.

The other great ruler of the Dynasty of Agade was
the
fourth, Sargon's grandson Naram-Sin. According to tradition, supported
to some extent by archaeological evidence, Naram-Sin controlled an
empire extending from Central Asia ,minor to the southern end of the
Persian Gulf. Ultimately the dynasty collapsed before the combined
pressures of peoples from the northern and eastern mountains, despite
the vigorous action taken by Naram-Sin (II).

The achievements of the Agade dynasty were of lasting importance
despite its relatively short duration (2371-2230 B.C.). Especially
significant was the introduction of new administrative methods, in
particular the attempt at centralised government from . This was
destined to have far-reaching consequences for the future.

With the collapse of the central government of Agade, northern
Babylonia was occupied by a mountain people called the Gutians, a
savage race regarded with marked aversion in later tradition. However,
the Gutians probably had little influence in southern Babylonia, which
was still predominantly Sumerian both in race and culture, and from
this time the cities of this area once again rose to prominence. Under
the Dynasty of Akkad, Agade had been the Principal port of the country,
but with this eliminated by the Gutian conquest, trade, and the wealth
resulting from it, began to flow up the Persian Gulf into the southern
cities. One of the cities which flourished at this time and about which
we are particularly well informed is Lagash, under its ruler Gudea
(12). This ruler's greatest achievement (from his own point of view)
was the rebuilding of the temple of the city god, and he left a
considerable number of inscriptions relating to this. These
inscriptions give us valuable about the international trade of the
time. From them we details learn that

Cedar beams from the Cedar-mountain [Lebanon] He had landed on the
quayside ... ;

Gudea had... bitumen and gypsum

Broughtin... ships from the hills of Madga [Kirkuk?], ...

Gold dust was brought to the city-ruler from the Gold-land

[Armenia]....

Shining precious metal came to Gudea from abroad, Bright carnelian
came from Melukhkha [the Indus valley?].

Politically, however, the most
important feature of the new period was the return to prominence of the
city of Ur. Already at an earlier period (around 2600 B.C.) Ur had been
a leading centre of Sumerian civilisation, and it was in royal tombs of
that period that Sir Leonard Woolley discovered the famous art
treasures with which his name is associated (14-16). Now, at about 2100
B.C., Ur the capital of a Sumerian dynasty, known as the Third Dynasty
of Ur, which governed the whole of Mesopotamia in an efficient
bureaucracy. Wealth flowed into the capital by way of the Persian Gulf,
and we have some of the actual trading documents, showing that the
great temple of Ur exported textiles and oil to a distant port called
Makkan, importing in exchange copper, beads and ivory.

This dynasty collapsed after about a
century, leaving Babylonia in temporary chaos. The main factor in the
collapse was a fresh movement of Semitic peoples, this time the group
called the Amurru or Amorites.

Chapter II

KINGDOMS RISE AND FALL

A PEOPLE called the Amorites are well known to readers of the Old
Testament, where the term is used for one of the main groups of
inhabitants of Palestine before the final entry of the Hebrews under
Joshua. These Biblical Amorites were descendants of settlers who had
come in from the desert several centuries before. They had formed part
of a great group of peoples, called in cuneiform sources the Amurra
(singular, An-iurru), on the move in the Syrian desert and threatening
all the fertile lands from Palestine to Iraq. 'Amurru' was probably
originally the name of a particular tribe, but it came to be used of
the whole of a certain wave of invaders from the Syrian desert.

The cuneiform sources give us our first hint of the movements of
these Amurru in an inscription from the Dynasty of Akkad. It comes from
a document which refers to the year in which Sharkalisharri
[Naram-Sin's son and successor] defeated the Amurru in Basar, Basar
being a mountain in the Syrian desert. References to these Amurru
become more frequent during the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur. One
passage shows the contempt of the city dwelling Sumerian for the savage
desert dweller, who is described as 'the Amurru, . . . who eats raw
meat, who has no house in his lifetime, and after he dies lies
unburied'. Quickly, however, these Amurru ceased to be despised desert
savages and became a threat to the security, and finally to the very
existence, of the Third Dynasty of Ur. Some of the rulers of that
dynasty built fortifications against these people. Such measures did
not, however, succeed in holding back the mounting pressure, and the
ancient cities, first of the Middle Euphrates and then of Babylonia
proper, gradually fell under the domination of these people.

The presence of people of the Amurru group within the areas mentioned is shown in the first instance by the
nature of
the personal names, and afterwards, with the final collapse of the
Third Dynasty of Ur, by the rise in a number of cities of dynasties in
which the personal names, god names and institutions are obviously of
Amorite origin. Such dynasties may for convenience be called 'Amorite',
although some regard the term as inaccurate when used in this sense. As
might be expected in view of geography, it is on the Middle Euphrates
that a dynasty of Amorite origin is first in evidence, the city
concerned being Mari. In other cities, some of the earlier peaceful
Amorite settlers actually became officials in the service of the
Dynasty of Ur. One such was Ishbi-Erra, who was in charge of the city
of Isin under the last King of Ur and who, after loyal to the end,
subsequently founded a dynasty of his own.

The third Dynasty of Ur finally crumbled under the pressure of
Amorite invaders, city after city ceasing to acknowledge the
sovereignty of Ur. The final overthrow of the dynasty was, however, not
the work of the Amorites, but of the Elamites (from southern Persia),
who seized the opportunity to sack and occupy the capital, slaughtering
the inhabitants and carrying away the King. This stunning blow, marking
the final of the Sumerians as a political power, shows clear evidence
in the relics of destruction found when the city was excavated. This
disastrous event was long remembered in Babylonia.

With the breakdown of central control by Ur, dynasties arose in
other cities, the two most prominent at first being Isin and Larsa. For
this reason the century or so after the overthrow of Ur is often the
Isin-Larsa period (2006-1894 B.C.). The Larsa dynasty increased its
influence at the expense of Isin, but was finally itself overthrown
(1763 B.C.) by the sixth ruler of the of Babylon, the great Hammurabi
(1792-1750 B.C.).

The first Dynasty of Babylon (1894-1595 B.C.) is rightly thought of,
particularly during the reign of Hammurabi, as one of the highlights of
ancient civilisation. It was an age of material prosperity, and it is
also fortunately one of the periods about which we are best informed.
There are not only many thousands of business documents and letters
from Babylon and other cities, but we also have the collection of laws
promulgated by Hammurabi himself (82). Together these documents make it
clear that the pre-eminence of Hammurabi amongst his contemporaries,
which enabled him to raise Babylon to a cultural supremacy which it was
never to lose, was not due solely to his military ability. It also owed
much to his political insight and aptitude for diplomacy, and to his
administrative ability and concern for social justice throughout his
land.

It would be a mistake to think of Babylon as the only city-state of
significance at this period. Farther north there was the kingdom of
Assyria, where another prince of Amorite origin, Shamshi-Adad I, an
older contemporary of Hammurabi, established himself as king in 1814
B.C., and exerted considerable influence upon the regions to the south
and south-west. In the early part of his reign Hammurabi had another
powerful contemporary in the King of Eshnunna, who controlled the
cities along the Diyala and in the neighbourhood of modern Baghdad.
There were other Amorite centres of power in North Syria. The situation
is summed up in a letter from this period which says

There is no king who of himself alone is strongest. Ten or fifteen
kings follow Hammurabi of Babylon, the same number follow RimSin of
Larsa, the same number follow lbal-pi-El of Eshnunna, the same number
follow Amut-pi-El of Qatanum [in Syria], and twenty kings follow
Yarim-Lim of Yamkhad [in North Syria].

Another city-state of considerable importance until finally
conquered by Hammurabi in 1761 B.C. was Mari, on the Middle Euphrates.
It was a city of respectable antiquity, having been one of the outposts
of Sumerian civilisation, and in the early second millennium B.C. was
the capital of a kingdom extending over 200 miles along the river. In
1796 B.C. it experienced what must have been common in its history, a
change of dynasty, when Shamshi-Adad of Assyria, benefiting by a palace
revolution in Mari, placed his own son Yasmakh-Adad on the throne of
Mari as his sub-king and representative. French archaeologists working
before the war at Tell Hariri, the site of ancient Mari, had the good
fortune to discover the royal archives from this period, and amongst
them correspondence between Shamshi-Adad and the sub-kings who were his
sons, as well as correspondence between the various rulers and their
officials. Of less immediate human interest, but still very important
for many details of life of the time, ere the business documents. These
various classes of texts, together with the physical remains of the
buildings, combine to give us a surprisingly detailed picture of life
at the time, of which some account is given in Chapter III.

The way of life which crystallised at this period under the shadow
of Hammurabi was, with minor changes, the general pattern in Babylonia
until, with the Persian conquest of the country in 539 B.C. and the
subsequent growth of Hellenistic (Greek) influence, Babylonian
civilisation finally withered away. The actual political achievements
of Hammurabi, in bringing all Babylonia, and some regions beyond, under
the control of the city of Babylon, did not long survive him. In the
reign of Hammurabi's successor the people of the marsh country of South
Babylonia broke away, forming a separate and long-lasting dynasty,
whilst the same ruler came into conflict with the Cassites, a
non-Semitic people from the mountains north-east of Babylonia.

After this first evidence of Cassite pressure, the following century
saw a gradual increase both of peaceful immigration of individual
Cassites, and of organised movements of armed bands. This may be
connected with pressure upon the Cassites themselves by a southward
movement of Indo-European and other peoples farther north. Amongst
these peoples two of the most prominent groups were the Hittites and
the Hurrians. The names of both groups will be recognised in the Bible
(the Hurrians under the form Horites), but it should be borne in mind
that the people called Hittites and Horites in the Bible may have had
only a very slender id distant link with the groups known as Hittites
and Hurrians in the cuneiform documents. The Hittites, an Indo-European
people whose language was closely related to Latin, had begun to pear
in northern Anatolia (eastern Turkey) early in the second millennium
and had established a powerful kingdom in Central Anatolia soon after
1700 B.C. The Hurrians, who were neither Indo-European nor Semitic, had
been centred on the region around Lake Van since before the Agade
period, but had begun pushing southwards on a large scale by the early
second Millennium.

These various pressures made the
collapse of the central government in Babylonia inevitable, though
surprisingly the actual overthrow of the city of Babylon was at the
hands of the most distant of the peoples mentioned, the Hittites from
central Anatolia. In 1595 B.C. the Hittite ruler made a sudden attack
southwards into Syria, and then moved down the Euphrates to plunder
Babylon. Political developments in his capital made the Hittite king
return as suddenly as he had come, but Babylon was left powerless to
resist a further aggressor, and Cassite forces descended from the hills
to take over control of the capital and to impose their government upon
North Babylonia. This Cassite dynasty, which rapidly adopted much of
the culture and institutions of their predecessors in the land, lasted
about 400 years (1595-c. 1150 B.C.)(19).

We return to the Hurrians, whom we
have seen were moving southwards during the first half of the second
millennium B.C. Associated with them at this time was an aristocracy of
the race which we know as Indo-European or Aryan. The Aryans derived
ultimately from the steppes of Russia, one of the original homes of the
wild horse. Because of this, the Aryans were always found in
association with the horse, and it was the Aryan migrants of the second
millennium who introduced the horse-drawn chariot as an instrument of
war(20). This chariot-owning Aryan aristocracy, ruling over a
population which was largely Hurrian, had succeeded, shortly before
1500 B.C., in establishing a powerful kingdom centred upon the Habur
area. We know this kingdom as Mitanni.

The kingdom of Mitanni is, oddly enough, best known not from
evidence found in the kingdom itself, but from documents discovered in
the land of the Hittites, in Syria, and above all in Egypt. All of
these documents point to the considerable, if temporary, importance of
Mitanni. The sources from Egypt are of two kinds. One is the Egyptian
hieroglyphic documents, which have references to armed conflict with
Mitanni in the Syrian region, the area in which the two States came
into competition. The other Egyptian source, surprisingly, consists of
clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform. These tablets are the famous El
Amarna letters (44), found in Central Egypt at the end of last century,
and constituting part of the diplomatic archives of the Egyptian kings
at a period around 1400 B.C. These documents include letters to the
Pharaoh from various princes of Palestine and Syria, from the kings of
the Hittite land, Assyria and Babylonia, and from the King of Mitanni.
The material concerned with the other rulers cannot be dealt with here,
but the part of the correspondence involving Mitanni clearly shows that
at time Mitanni was on an equality with Egypt. These letters show that
marriage alliances were made between Mitanni and Egypt, and give
evidence of several instances in which Mitannian princesses were sent
as brides for the King of Egypt. (It may be added that the Cassite
ruler of Babylonia also made marriage alliances of this kind with
Egypt.) Mitanni was so powerful at this period that its eastern
neighbour Assyria was completely eclipsed and indeed at one time came
actually a vassal of Mitanni. By 1350 B.C., however, Mitanni, torn by
internal dynastic strife, had become so weak that was virtually a
dependency of the Hittite ruler Shuppiluliuma. Assyria was now able to
reassert its independence, and this period, during the reign of
Ashur-uballit I (1365-1330 B.C.), marks the beginning of the emergence
of Assyria as one of the great Powers of the ancient Near East.

The Assyrians of the period 1350-612 B.C. were one of the most
important, as well as one of the most maligned, peoples of the ancient
world. Situated in northern Mesopotamia on the open plains immediately
south of the great mountain ranges of Armenia, the people of Assyria
had borne the brunt of the pressure generated by Indo-European peoples
on the move in the steppes of Russia. We have already seen that Assyria
was for a time actually a vassal of Mitanni, and in the following
centuries, up to about 1000 B.C., it was to be subject to constant
pressure from Aramaean peoples the region to the west. The human
response to this continual pressure was the development of a sturdy
warlike people prepared to fight ruthlessly for their existence.

Assyrian political history from 1350 B.C. onwards shows a curious
rhythm between periods of expansion and decline. First came a period of
about a century in which Assyria secured itself from the threat of
domination by Babylonia, and finally settled the Mitannian problem by
turning what remained of that once powerful kingdom into the
westernmost province of Assyria. It was during this period that Assyria
first felt the pressure of a new wave of Aramaean peoples, called the
Akhlamu, moving in from the west. At this time also, there arose in the
mountains of Armenia a new tribal confederation, known as Uruatri or
Urartu (the, Biblical Ararat), shortly to become a kingdom of
considerable importance.

This period of consolidation and expansion culminated in the capture
by Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244-1208 B.C.) of Babylon. The significance of
this was as if a King of Scotland in the Middle Ages had captured
London. After this climax there was a sudden decline in the fortunes of
Assyria. This was in part a direct consequence of the preceding period
of expansion, in that repeated armed conflict with peoples to the
north, east and south must have taken a serious toll of the cream of
Assyrian manpower. Probably, however, a more important cause was the
disturbed condition of the Near East as a whole. There was no longer a
kingdom of Mitanni to wield political control in the Syrian area,
whilst Egypt, which had frequently exercised suzerainty over Palestine
and parts of Syria, was now quite unable to make its influence felt
beyond its own boundaries. The Hittite Empire, which formerly had given
political stability to Asia Minor and northern Syria, thereby
protecting the trade routes, had, under the pressure of people
migrating from Europe, rapidly crumbled away until by 1200 B.C. it was
powerless. The disturbed situation throughout much of the Near at this
time, with the trade routes insecure and the villages depopulated, is
reflected in the Book of Judges, for example in 6-7: 'In the days of
Shamgar.... caravans ceased and travellers kept to the byways. The
peasantry ceased in Israel. . . .' This situation throughout the Near
East was ultimately the result of a southward movement of peoples from
Europe, of which the Greeks and probably the Biblical Philistines were
a part. It was these people ultimately broke up the Hittite Empire,
destroyed Egyptian authority in Syria and Palestine, and seriously
weakened Egypt itself by a direct attempt at invasion, which was beaten
off by a great sea battle in about 1190 B.C. In these circumstances
Assyrian trade with the Mediterranean region and Asia Minor was
disastrously affected, so that Assyria may have been unable to obtain
adequate supplies of such basic materials as metals, for which Asia
Minor was one of the chief sources. For a short period Assyria fell
under the suzerainty of Babylonia, which by reason of its geographical
position was largely screened from the trouble caused by the situation
in Asia Minor and Syria.

Babylonia, though more favourably placed than Assyria, did not
altogether escape the effects of the general dislocation throughout the
Near East, and it was during this period that the Cassite dynasty was
finally overthrown. From the consequent chaos there emerged a new
dynasty, known as the Second Dynasty of Isin, of which the most
important ruler was Nebuchadnezzar I (1124-1103 B.C.). This King
succeeded in extending Babylonian control over the mountain regions
east and north-east of his country.

The establishment of stable conditions in Babylonia and the securing
of the trade routes from farther east had a cumulative on the whole of
Mesopotamia, and the end of the twelfth century marks the beginning of
a new period of Assyrian expansion under Ashur-resh-ishi (1133-1116
B.C.) and his son Tiglath-Pileser I (1115-1077 B.C.). The former threw
off the political suzerainty of Babylonia, and took the offensive both
against the Akhlamu to the west and the mountain tribes to the east,
thus giving security over a considerably greater area and the
possibility of economic prosperity. Tiglath-Pileser had to deal with a
direct threat resulting from the southward movement of peoples already
referred to. This occurred when a large body of Mushku (the people
known in the Old Testament as Meshech and in Greek literature as the
Phrygians) moved into the Assyrian province of Kummukh in South Asia
Minor. Tiglath-Pileser penetrated into Asia Minor to drive off these
invaders, and thereby ensured Assyrian security in the north-west. With
his northern flank secured, he was now able to conduct an expedition to
the coast of Syria, where he received tribute: this was probably
another way of saying that the Phoenician cities agreed to trade in
timber and other commodities. Tiglath-Pileser also made diplomatic
contact with the King of Egypt, from whom he received a live crocodile
as a gesture of good will. The increased material prosperity resulting
from Tiglath-Pileser's success in opening and maintaining the trade
routes across western Asia is reflected in a considerable amount of
building activity in connection with the temples of Assyria.

Soon after the death of Tiglath-Pileser the pendulum swung once
again, so that a long period of difficulty and stress followed a time
of relative prosperity. The main cause of the setback on this occasion
was the growing pressure of the Aramaeans, already mentioned. This time
Babylonia was affected as much as, or even more than, Assyria, so that
ultimately an Aramaean prince, Adadapal-iddinam (1067-1046 B.C.), was
able to usurp the throne of Babylonia. The Assyrian ruler of the time,
Ashur-bel-kala (10741057 B.C.) was not only unable to assist the
legitimate Babylonian ruler, but was even driven to recognise the
usurper and make a marriage alliance with him.

The pressure of the Aramaean racial movement had passed its peak by
1000 B.C., and during the following century Assyria made a slow
recovery. This became marked during the reign of Adadnirari 11 (911-891
B.C.). Under him Assyria effected a military expansion, and was able to
safeguard its boundaries to south and east, and to protect the trade
routes to the west by establishing fortified posts along the Middle
Euphrates and in the Habur region. The security achieved by Adad-nirari
11's policy is reflected in economic well-being, and in one inscription
this King writes: 'I built administrative buildings throughout my land.
I installed ploughs throughout the breadth of my land. I increased
grain stores over those of former times.... I increased the number of
horses broken to the yoke. . . .' River trade was of importance, and is
reflected in the rebuilding of the quay wall of the capital Ashur on
the Tigris. Agriculture flourished (21).

Adad-nirari II's successors
(Tukulti-Ninurta 11, 890-884 B.C., Ashurnasirpal II, 883-859 B.C., and
Shalmaneser III, 858-824 B.C.) successfully continued the policy of
military and economic expansion, gradually extending the area
controlled by Assyria until the whole region from the Mediterranean
coast to the Zagros Mountains, and from Cilicia to Babylonia was either
directly administered by Assyria or ruled by vassals accepting Assyrian
overlordship. All the trade routes of the Near East, except those of
Palestine, thus came into Assyrian hands.

It was during the reign of Shalmaneser
III that Assyria first came into conflict with the kingdom of Israel,
though the incident concerned is known only from the Assyrian records
and not from the Bible. The clash occurred when the Syrian and
Palestinian States formed a coalition to meet an Assyrian expedition to
the Mediterranean in 853 B.C. According to the Assyrian records the
coalition forces included "2,000 chariots and 10,000 soldiers of
Akhabbu of the land of Sir'ala". Akhabbu of Sir'ala was unquestionably
Ahab of Israel. Shalmaneser claimed a defeat of the western forces, a
claim borne out by the fact that a monument of four years later shows
an emissary of Jehu, Ahab's successor, paying tribute (25).

Assyrian contact with Syria from this time is reflected in the
collections of ancient Near Eastern art in modern museums. As we learn
from the Bible (I Kings x 18, xxii 39; Amos iii 15, vi 4), decoration
in ivory was much appreciated in Palestine; and it seems that the
Assyrian kings shared this taste. Syrian craftsmen Were famous for
their skill in ivory carving, and so from this time onwards the
Assyrian kings carried off such men to the cities of Assyria, where
they were employed in beautifying the royal palaces. Great quantities
of carved ivory have been found at Nimrud, the site of the ancient
capital Calah (22, 83).

Towards the end of the reign of Shalmaneser III (23) there was a
rebellion involving some of the principal Assyrian cities. The great
ancient cities of Assyria and Babylonia had always claimed a degree of
independence, and in times of crisis the kings were often forced to
recognise this by exempting the citizens from certain forms of taxation
and liability to forced labour. It is likely that the long period of
growing Assyrian power since the time of Adad-nirari II had put the
King in a strong position, in which he was able to whittle away the
privileges of the ancient cities of Assyria. This was probably one of the factors which led to the
insurrection.
It was finally put down, and Shalmaneser was succeeded by his accepted
heir, Shamshi-Adad V (823-811 B.C.). This King continued the policy of
his predecessors, undertaking military action in the north and
north-east to defend Assyrian interests against Urartu and the Medes
(an Iranian 22 Carved ivory from Nimrud people who had recently
migrated into North-West Persia). He also extended the area under his
direct control to include the north-eastern edge of Babylonia, along
the Diyala, and even intervened within Babylonia itself to impose
submission upon some tribes called the Kaldu, whom we later know as
Chaldaeans. These tribes, occupying the most southerly part of
Babylonia, were virtually independent of the weak Babylonian King, and
it may have been their interference with trade routes from the Persian
Gulf region which led to Shamshi-Adad's action against them.

From about 800 B.C. Urartian influence began to expand, especially
in the North Syrian area, at the expense of Assyria, and the following
half century saw a drastic decline in the fortunes of Assyria.
Conditions within the homeland became so bad that in 746 B.C. there was
a revolt in the capital, Calah, the whole of the royal family being
murdered.

The man who came to the throne, who was probably of royal descent
though not of the family of his predecessor, was a certain Pul, who
took as his throne name Tiglath-Pileser (27). Tiglath-Pileser III
(745-727 B.C.) was one of the most able of Assyrian kings. He undertook
extensive administrative .reforms, reducing the power of provincial
governors and at the same time increasing the efficiency of provincial
administration (pp. 58-60). His reign saw a fresh extension of Assyrian
influence to Babylon in the south and to Syria and Palestine in the
west. His successor, Shalmaneser V (726-722 B.C.) maintained the same
general policy; he is best known for his 27 Tiglath-Pileser III siege
of Samaria, the capital of Israel, which culminated, in accordance with
the usual Assyrian policy, in the deportation to Assyria of the best of
the population of the land (2 Kings xvii 6).

The story of the remaining period of the Assyrian Empire is one of
continual expansion up to just after 640 B. C., and then a dramatic
collapse. The principal kings of this period (known as the Sargonid
period after the first of them) were Sargon 11 (721-705 B.C.),
Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.), Esarhaddon (680-669 B.C.), and Ashurbanipal
(680-626 B.C.). The political events of individual reigns need not
detain us, but it may be useful to say a word about the men themselves. Sargon seems to have had a taste
for
poetry, and some of his annals are written in an elegant verse form as
against the dry prose of some other Assyrian kings. (It is not of
course suggested that Sargon personally composed the annals in verse.)
Sennacherib is generally thought of as a ruthless barbarian, not
perhaps without justification, for he was one of the few conquerors of
Babylon to sack that centre of culture. At the same time he was, like
many other barbarians, very interested in technological progress. His
boast was that he had invented a new method of metal casting, devised
new irrigation equipment, and found new mineral resources. He was also
proud of having laid out Nineveh as his new capital, with parks to
beautify it and a new aqueduct(28) to
give it
a plentiful supply of good water. Of Esarhaddon little is known apart
from his military and political achievements. In the political sphere
he tried two new ideas, both of which had disastrous results. One was
to attempt to incorporate Egypt into his Empire: this over-stretched
Assyrian military resources and was one factor underlying the later
collapse. The other new policy was to bequeath Babylonia to one son and
Assyria and the rest of the Empire to another: the result here was that
the two brothers, at first the best of friends, became personally
involved in the old tensions between Assyria and Babylonia, so that
civil war broke out. This, however, is to anticipate.

A word may be said here about the succession in Assyria. Although
the kingship was normally treated as hereditary, it did not necessarily
pass to the oldest son. Esarhaddon, for example, specifically
emphasised that he was the chosen heir despite his being a younger son:

Of my big brothers I was their little brother. At the command of
Ashur ... [and other gods], my father ... formally promoted me in the
assembly of my brothers, (saying) thus: 'This is the son of my
succession.' When he asked (the gods) Shamash and Adad by
liverdivination, they answered him a definite 'Yes!', (saying) thus:
'He is your successor.' He therefore paid respect to their solemn word
and he assembled the people of Assyria, small and great, (with) my
brothers the seed of my father's house, and he made them swear their
solemn oath before Ashur ... [and other gods], the gods of Assyria, the
gods who dwell in heaven and earth, to protect my succession.

The accession of a king, if approved
by the gods, was accompanied by various favourable signs. Esarhaddon
said that when he ascended (after putting down an attempted
usurpation), 'there blew the south wind, the breath of Ea, the wind
whose blowing is good for the exercise of kingship; favourable signs
appeared in the heavens and on the earth'.

The son to whom Esarhaddon bequeathed Assyria and the major part of
the Empire was Ashurbanipal (26). This King prided him self on his
literacy and tells us - 'I grasped the wisdom of Nabu [the scribal
god], the whole of the scribal art of all the experts.' Some
Assyriologists, with an elder-sisterly attitude to cuneiform studies,
consider such a boast a presumption on the part of a mere Assyrian
monarch, but we have no real evidence entitling us to dismiss
Ashurbanipal's claim. Certainly he was keenly interested in cuneiform
literature, for it was he who was mainly responsible for collecting one
of the great libraries of Nineveh, the source of the thousands of
Kuyunjik tablets (p. 10).

The civil war between Ashurbanipal and
his brother in Babylon undoubtedly seriously weakened the Empire. None
the less, when Ashurbanipal finally captured Babylon in 648 B.C., his
position seemed superficially as strong as ever, so that between then
and 639 B.C. he was able to undertake a series of campaigns to overrun
Elam. There were, however, fresh factors in the world scene. In Iran,
north of Elam, the Medes, a group of vigorous Iranian tribes (a branch
of the Indo-European race) who had migrated into the area at about 900
B.C., were becoming a force to reckon with. Already at the time of
Esarhaddon they had been of sufficient importance for that King to bind
them by treaty to support his arrangement for the succession after his
death, and by 650 B.C. they had consolidated themselves into a powerful
kingdom which could, and ultimately did, successfully oppose Assyria.
North of Assyria, the kingdom of Urartu had been knocked out by fresh
hordes from Central Asia, who penetrated deep into Asia Minor. Although
Ashurbanipal succeeded for a while in using them to his own advantage
(as when he set them against a king on the coast of Asia Minor who was
supporting the independence movement in Egypt), it was only a matter of
time before some of these hordes turned against Assyria itself.

We know very little about Ashurbanipal's reign after 639 B.C. except
that the situation for Assyria was becoming increasingly grave. When
Ashurbanipal died in 626 B.C. a certain Nabopolassar, relying on
support from the Chaldaean (Kaldu) tribes of Babylonia, assumed the
kingship of that land, although Ashurbanipal's successors
Ashur-etillu-ili and Sin-shar-ishkun seem to have retained partial
authority in parts of the southern kingdom. However, Nabopolassar made
an alliance with the Medes, and his complete success against Assyria
was almost inevitable.

At the very end Assyria found an unexpected ally in Egypt, a Power
which would not view favourably the eventual handing over of the trade
routes of the Near East, hitherto controlled by Assyria, to the mercy
of such upstart and unpredictable people as the Medes and Chaldaeans.
The Egyptian support was, however, too late to restore the old order
and Nineveh fell in 612 B.C., the remnant of the Assyrian forces, with
their Egyptian allies, making a last stand at Carchemish in 605 B.C.,
only to meet with final defeat. The Assyrian Power was irrevocably at
an end.

Nabopolassar died at this moment. His
son and successor Nebuchadnezzar II had been his father's
Commander-in-Chief, and was a general of great experience and ability.
He grasped the remains of the Assyrian Empire, and extended his
authority to the Egyptian border, his two attacks upon Jerusalem (597
and 587 B.C.), and the deportation of the Jews to Babylonia, being very
well known. These were, in fact, simply incidents in Nebuchadnezzar's
struggle to impose his authority over an area which the new Egyptian
dynasty was coming to regard as its own sphere of influence. The Medes
at the same time extended their realm to include the old kingdom of
Urartu and much of Asia Minor.

The Neo-Babylonian Empire, as the empire founded by Nebuchadnezzar
is usually called, suffered economically from the fact that the Medes
now controlled the trade routes from farther east passing through the
old kingdom of Urartu and Asia Minor to the west. It was in an attempt
to rectify this that the Neo-Babylonian rulers tried to extend their
authority in the south-west, so that they would benefit by the trade
routes coming up from Arabia. We have seen that Nebuchadnezzar took
steps to control the whole of Syria and Palestine, and later in his
reign there is evidence that he unsuccessfully attempted an invasion of
Egypt itself. His second successor, Neriglissar, was probably actuated
by similar economic motives when he undertook a campaign into Asia
Minor (just before 556 B.C.). It was, however, the last Neo-Babylonian
King, Nabu-na'id (Nabonidus) (555-539 B.C.), who made the most
determined endeavours to put the Empire on a sounder economic footing.
Much of his reign was spent in western Arabia, where he established a
chain of military colonies along what is known as the 'incense route'
from Teima to Yathrib (modern Medina).

By the time of Nabu-na'id relations between Babylonia and the Medes
had gravely deteriorated, and Nabu-na)id in the early years of his
reign had looked with favour upon a certain prince who was in revolt
against the Median King. This prince was Cyrus the Persian. Cyrus,
however, once he had gained control of the Median Empire, proceeded
upon an expansionist policy which quickly brought him into conflict
with Babylonia. By brilliant generalship he succeeded in gaining
control, in 547 B.C., of the whole of Asia Minor as far as the Greek
settlements on the west coast, and then seized the eastern part of
Assyria, which of course fell within the Babylonian sphere of
influence. War broke out, and Cyrus invaded the Babylonian Empire over
a wide front. Public opinion through-out the civilised world at this
time is reflected in Isaiah xlv I and 4, where the Hebrew prophet hails
Cyrus as the chosen one of the Lord. Nabu-na)id was much less happily
placed. Even within Babylonia he was unpopular, in part from the
economic difficulties which faced the country and in part from attempts
he had made at religious reform, and when Cyrus finally marched upon
Babylon, he already had many adherents within the city. Babylon fell to
I him in 539 B.C.

The Persian Empire, into which Egypt was incorporated in 525 B.C.,
now exceeded in extent any which had gone before it, and of this Empire
Babylonia and Assyria formed only one province. Babylonian and Assyrian
culture had, however, a continuing influence, and amongst other things
Persian art (30), civil administration and military science owed much
to their Babylonian or Assyrian roots. Babylon was, if not the
political, certainly the -administrative and cultural capital of the
whole Persian Empire.

After 500 B.C. the Persian Empire came into collision with Greece,
and conflict continued intermittently until in 331 B.C. the Macedonian
Alexander the Great overthrew the Persian power at a battle near
Arbela, proceeding afterwards to extend his authority to the borders of
India. Had Alexander lived, it was his intention to establish a world
empire with its capital at Babylon, but his premature death at Babylon
in 323 B.C., at the age of thirty-two, left his territories to be
divided up amongst his generals. The eastern provinces, including
Babylonia and Assyria, eventually fell to Seleucus 1 (301-281 B.C.).
Under the Seleucids Babylonia and Assyria came increasingly under
Hellenistic cultural influence, and Akkadian, which had already 'been
superseded by Aramaic as the language of everyday speech, was no longer
even written, except for religious or astronomical purposes. The old
culture of Babylonia and Assyria was dead, and the future lay with
Palestine, Greece, and Rome.

Chapter III

LIFE AT AN AMORITE COURT

AT the end of 1933 French
archaeologists began excavations Li at a site called Tell Hariri on the
Middle Euphrates in eastern Syria, continuing there until the end of
1938 and resuming again after the war. The site was quickly proved to
be that of the ancient city of Mari, already known from cuneiform
documents from other places as the seat of an important dynasty. Large
numbers of cuneiform tablets were found, the most important single find
being that of an archive of about 13,000 tablets in 1936. Another
remarkable discovery was the remains of a huge palace which, when
excavated, proved to contain nearly 300 rooms and to cover some six
acres, that is, as much as sixty or seventy good-class suburban houses
with their gardens. The state of preservation of the walls was
surprisingly good for a building 4000 years old, remaining in parts to
a height of up to sixteen feet, with some of the doorways intact. The
archaeologist in charge of the excavations was even able to write to
the effect that many of the domestic installations of the palace, such
as the kitchens, baths and pantries, could still have functioned almost
without any repairs(31). On some of the plastered walls there were
still to be seen the original mural paintings (32).

It is now clear that the palace was
pillaged in the early second millennium (in fact by Hammurabi of
Babylon, in about 1760 B.C.), and the cuneiform documents shed a flood
of light on the life of the time. They give us information not only on
the international scene just before the sack of the city, but also on
the history of the occupants of the palace, providing us with a
picture, often in considerable detail, of the private and public
circumstances in which they lived.

One must imagine the city as lying within a strong defensive wall.
From a distance the most conspicuous building, as in the majority of
Mesopotamian cities, was the ziggurrat or great temple-tower, standing
perhaps 150 feet above the plain, with a number of temples grouped at
its foot. Not far off was the huge expanse of the great palace already
referred to. This palace was of course not merely a royal residence,
but was also an administrative centre from which all the work of what
we should call the Civil Service and Foreign Service was directed. It
is this that accounts for the presence within the palace of Mari of the
thousands of letters and administrative and judicial documents. In
contemporary English terms the royal palace of this period is to be
thought of as Whitehall rather than Buckingham Palace. Even this does
not cover all the functions of the palace of Mari. Part of it was a
business centre, with warehouses where merchants could deposit their
goods, and another section must have served as barracks for At least a
part of the contingent of troops stationed permanently thin Mari. Mari
was also a military depot, and it was probably thin the palace
courtyards that equipment such as battering-ram and siege-towers were
stored until required elsewhere. Palaces fulfilling functions similar
to those of the palace of Mari existed, though on a smaller scale, in
the other principal towns of the kingdom.

Naturally, part of the palace of Mari constituted the private
quarters and the State apartments of the King himself. At the time we
are imagining, this was Yasmakh-Adad, a younger son of Shamshi-Adad of
Assyria. To judge by the correspondence which passed between him and
his elder brother and his stern old father, Yasmakh-Adad seems to have
been regarded as somewhat frivolous and lacking in a sense of
responsibility. We certainly find him getting into a number of scrapes
for bungling his official duties, but, as we shall see, there was so
much for which he was responsible that an occasional slip-up was
excusable. Despite any failings which his father and elder brother may
have seen in him, there were strong ties of affection between the
members of the family. Thus we find, in one letter, Shamshi-Adad
strongly insisting that Yasmakh-Adad should come to his city for a
fortnight's stay, whilst on many an occasion Yasmakh-Adad's older
brother went out of his way to get him out of trouble.

There are hints in the letters passing between Yasmakh-Adad and his
father and brother that he was fond of good company. If indeed this was
so, Yasmakh-Adad had plenty of opportunity for indulging in his taste,
as at any time the number of people in residence at his Court might run
into hundreds. These included members of his own family, visiting
ambassadors, permanent palace officials, ministers and administrators,
officers of the garrison, and high officials from other towns
temporarily in Mari. There were also ladies of various classes from
wives to religious prostitutes, but these probably had their own
quarters and did not mix with the men in the general business of the
day.

Not much is known about the actual
routine of the palace at this period. It seems clear that the King held
a Court each morning, at which such officials and ambassadors as had
business to transact would be present. Here the King would have read to
him by his ministers letters sent from his father or brother or from
foreign rulers or private persons. Probably many of the letters were
read out publicly, though others were, from their contents, obviously
for the King's ear alone. Sometimes a correspondent might provide his
ambassador with a dummy letter full of trivialities to be read in
public, leaving the ambassador to give the King's chief minister the
genuine communication in a private interview on a suitable occasion.
Another of the King's functions at his public audience would be the
settlement of legal disputes. Serious lawsuits, which officials had
considered too grave or too difficult for them to settle, would on
these occasions be referred to the King for a decision.

Part of a typical royal day must have been taken up with religious
ceremonies, since in ancient Mesopotamia the King always played an
essential part in the State religion. Indeed, at some periods the King
was actually considered divine, though not at this time. In the course
of his religious duties the King might be required to visit one or
other of the temples of Mari, or even of other towns in the kingdom, to
officiate at rituals or to perform certain ceremonies. This could
involve such things as slaughtering sheep for sacrifice, making reports
to the gods on State affairs, receiving investiture from the gods, or
simply paying respects to the images of the gods(46). (In speaking of
gods, we include here goddesses.) The King would certainly also have to
attend certain feasts of the gods, and possibly some of their daily
meals. The use of the terms 'feasts' and 'meals' here is not to be
taken as metaphorical: they were real meals with real food in large
quantities set out on tables before the images of the gods. Who really
ate the food we can only guess, but no doubt the priests after their
families lived well.

At a later period the gods had four
meals a day, two main meals and two snacks, and it is a reasonable
assumption that they already did so at the period we are considering.
As to what the humans in the palace did, we are not certain in this
respect, but we do know that one of the daily meals was a formal
dinner. The King partook of this in the company of visiting dignitaries
and some of his own officials, and the number dining at the King's
table might be anything from a dozen to a hundred. Whether the ladies
of the Court were admitted to this is not altogether certain, but it
seems likely that they took their meals separately. This is suggested
by a ration list in which provisions are specified for 'the religious
prostitutes, the harem women, the lady singers'.

At the dinner distinguished guests
wore a special robe given them by their royal host. This was what in
current jargon we might call a 'status symbol', and there was
heart-burning amongst those at Court who did not receive this honour.
At present our information about what the guests ate at the royal
dinner is distinctly one-sided. Lists of provisions for the royal meals
have been found in the palace, and as they contain no meat courses, one
might rashly conclude that the Court was vegetarian. In fact, however,
we know that beef and mutton were eaten by people who could afford
them, and probably the reason we have no mention of meat is that there
was a separate butcher's department in the palace with its own
accounts, which are still awaiting discovery. Fish was also eaten, some
species being particularly sought after. Amongst other foodstuffs we
hear about, four varieties of 'bread' are distinguished, of which the
commonest was an unleavened bread in the form of thin crisp disks made
from whole-meal barley flour. Another type was specifically described
as 34 A goddess from Mari 'leavened bread', whilst the others were
probably what we should refer to as pastries, since they contained such
ingredients as sesame oil and something called 'honey'. The doubt about
the latter term is that the same Akkadian word sometimes means honey
from wild bees and sometimes date-syrup. Amongst vegetables in common
use at this time were cucumbers, peas, beans, plants rather like cress,
and garlic. There was a kind of truffle which was considered a great
delicacy, and we have mention of baskets of them being sent to the
King. The commonest fruit was, of course, the date, but grapes and figs
are also commonly mentioned.

As to beverages, both beer and wine were available (35). The beer
was produced locally, though wine had to be imported from the kingdoms
to the north and north-east. In some of these kingdoms the rulers were
very proud of their vintages.

On special occasions there would be a Court entertainment, of which
no doubt a prominent feature would be music and overindulgence in
liquor. The music was provided by specialty trained slave-girls. It is
also likely that poets or minstrels recited traditional stories, of an
improving or amusing nature, such as fables in which the date-palm and
tamarisk, or the fox and dog, argued their respective merits. Several
compositions which were probably put to this purpose have come down to
us.

It is now time to turn from Yasmakh-Adad's relaxations to the
serious business of his life.2
His personal responsibility was considerable, covering a remarkably
wide range of matters. Officials and private people would constantly be
sending problems for the King to solve. A ship might have been wrecked
on the Euphrates, so that the grain it was carrying for the palace had
had to be beached. What was to be done about the grain and the crew? An
,ox intended for the palace had grown so fat and heavy that it could
not stand, still less be driven to Mari. The official shouldered off
the problem on to the King: 'Let my lord send instructions about this
matter.' Another man wrote to say that the chariot with which the King
had provided him had broken down in the course of his .journeys: could
the writer please have a replacement. The King was informed that the
wall of some town was falling down and there was no mason available to
deal with it: could he please send either ,a mason to repair the wall
or a doctor in case of accident. A lion had been caught, and, although
no instructions had been received from the King, it was now on its way
to the capital by ship, for fear it escaped. A palace official had died
and left an orphan son without means of support: would the King be kind
enough to make arrangements. A wife had either run away or been
kidnapped and gone to another country: would the king please intercede
with the foreign ruler for her return.

Other problems the King might receive
to deal with were of a religious nature. Thus one official sends a
message from the State god Dagan, who is seen on more than one occasion
to have become rather impatient at neglect: 'Dagan has sent me a
message, "Send to your lord, and in the coming month, on the
fourteenth, let the pagrai sacrifice be performed."' The King
was also constantly having to take account of omens reaching him.
Religious functionaries were an important part of the personnel of any
city or district, and amongst such people diviners (that is, priests
who professed to foretell the future in matters affecting the State)
were considered almost indispensable. Indeed, in one letter
YasmakhAdad's brother points out to him that 'there can be no patum [a
particular administrative district] without a diviner'. The actual
procedure in divination was most commonly to dedicate and sacrifice a
sheep and then examine its liver and lungs. The theory was that the
gods would write their intentions on the sheep's organs by signs which
could be interpreted by the learned(36). Omens so obtained were duly
reported to the King and apparently taken seriously. A correspondent
reports:

In the city of Sagaratim, at the monthly sacrifice and my lord's
sacrifice, I examined the omens. The left side of the 'finger' [a
projecting piece of the organ] was split, the middle 'finger' of the
lungs was over to the left. It is a sign of fame. Let my lord be happy.

Omens had to be taken before a ruler or high official went on a
journey, and there were also diviners on service with the army. Even
the tactics of military units might be decided by the manner in which
the diviners interpreted the omens. We have a letter specifically
saying, in connection with arrangements , for the disposition of
troops, 'The diviners shall weigh up the omens, and according to the
appearance of favourable Omens 150 men shall go out or 150 men shall
come in.' However, despite the importance attached to omens, kings were
sometimes intelligent enough, or (from the point of view of the
diviners) pigheaded enough, to disregard them and rely on their own
judgement. We see this possibility recognised by an official who, in
reporting the omens, told the King that they were not favourable for a
certain military expedition and begged the King to pay serious heed to
them. None the less, he accepted the fact that the King might please
himself, and expressed himself willing to do his part whatever course
was decided upon. Such independence of thought was however discouraged,
and there existed cautionary tales in the form of legends about the
unpleasant fate which befell kings of old, such as Naram-Sin of Agade,
who had been foolish enough to act against the omens.

One of the biggest preoccupations of the King must have been his
control of his officers and what we might call his Civil Service. It
was necessary to have officials to administer the various towns and
districts, to see to the collection of taxes (mostly in kind), to
control irrigation, and to maintain order; and officers were also
needed for the army. In the absence of currency issued by the State,
there was no convenient way of providing for such officials except by
the grant of land. Thus the King of Mari had to arrange for this. The
way in which this distribution of estates was done was often a cause of
complaint, and we frequently find kings appealed to by those who felt
they had been hard-treated in this respect. A typical complaint from a
disgruntled officer runs: 'Neither corn nor field has been appointed to
me.... I cannot cultivate a field, I cannot eat rations with the
soldiers of the fortress. I am starving. Let my lord appoint
(something) for me.'

It was technically the King's task to appoint governors over the
cities, but in practice the citizens could make their own nominations,
which might well be accepted, especially if accompanied with a
substantial present. We find this situation in the following letter:

To my lord Yasmakh-Adad say, thus says Tarim-Shakim [a high-ranking
civil servant]: 'Baqqum, the Man [i.e. ruler] of the city Tizrakh, has
gone to his fate [i.e. died]. Now the citizens of Tizrakh have come and
they say "Set Kali-II (to serve) as Agent (over) us." Furthermore, he
has delivered one mina of silver to the Palace (in consideration of)
this being decreed. Now, therefore, I have dispatched Kali-11 before my
lord. Let my lord set him to the sheikhdom of Tizrakh, and let him
accept from him the one mina of silver as appropriate.'

Another of the many formal responsibilities of the King was the
regulation of the calendar. Throughout Mesopotamian history the
calendar used was based on a year consisting of twelve lunar months.
Since the average period from one new moon to the next is twenty-nine
and a half days, twelve lunar months amount to 354 days, which is
eleven and a quarter days short of a solar year. Thus after three years
the lunar calendar would be thirty-three and three-quarter days out
from the solar year, and would need an extra month put in (or
'intercalated') to bring it more or less into line. It was the King's
duty to arrange for this, though of course he did not work it out
personally but was advised by his astronomers.

Probably the heaviest part of the King's duties concerned his
relations with foreign rulers, with problems ranging from runaway wives
to war. There were always foreign ambassadors at YasmakhAdad's Court,
and he himself had ambassadors at the Courts of other rulers. Some such
officials might be more or less permanently attached to a particular
Court, whilst others would be special envoys entrusted with
negotiations about particular matters, and passing from one Court to
another as circumstances required. Naturally we have no record of the
business transacted verbally between ambassadors and the King, and our
sources are solely the written documents brought by the envoys.

Relations between friendly rulers mostly concerned either trade or
military aid. Kings gave each other military assistance not only by
direct alliance but also, in small-scale operations, by the loan of
troops. Such loans would be intended only for a limited action during a
particular emergency, and since in such cases the lender and borrower
are inclined to differ as to when the emergency is over, this
frequently led to friction. We thus find complaints of the following
kind from a ruler who had lent troops in this way: 'Since the god has
destroyed the enemy and the days of cold weather have arrived, why are
you retaining the servants of your brother?' Clearly the winter was
regarded as a close season for military operations.

Kings of this period often sent each other presents, sometimes as
genuine gifts designed to establish or retain friendly relations. Thus
we find the King of Carchemish sending the King of Mari a present of
wine. It was the King of Carchemish who was so proud of his wine, and
on another occasion we find him writing: 'If there is no good wine ...
for you to drink, send me a message, and I will send you good wine.' At
other times the sending of presents was a disguised form of trade,
since a corresponding present was expected in return. If one of the
kings was a mean man this was liable to lead to disappointment. Thus we
find one disgruntled ruler, the petty King of the Syrian State of
Qatna, who on one occasion thought he had made a bad bargain, and wrote
to Ishme-Dagan, the brother of Yasmakh-Adad, to this effect:

This thing is unspeakable! But yet I must speak it so that I may
relieve my heart [almost 'so that I may get it off my chest']. You
desired from me, as your request, two horses, and I had them sent to
you. Now you have had twenty minas of lead brought to me.... The price
of a horse here with us ... is 600 (shekels) of silver [i.e. ten minas
of silver]. But you have had only twenty minas of lead brought to me.

Since the price of lead was only one-fourteenth that of silver,
there was some substance in the King of Qatna's complaint.

The merchants were important members of the community, and a king of
this period would sometimes have to take up their case with a foreign
ruler to protect their interests. Thus we find Yasmakh-Adad writing to
the great Hammurabi of Babylon over a difficulty which had befallen one
of the trading caravans from Mari. He writes:

To Hammurabi say, thus says Yasmakh-Adad. 'Previously your brother
[i.e. the writer of the letter, Yasmakh-Adad himself) dispatched a
caravan to the city of Tilmun. [Tilmun was well to the south of
Babylonia, so such a caravan would have to pass through Hammurabi's
territory.] In due course this caravan returned. It was held up by
Ili-Ebukh [some official of Hammurabi] in (connection with) a claim
over a well.... They brought that caravan to Babylon safely before you.
. .

Yasmakh-Adad then goes on to say what he would like done about the
caravan.

Farmers as well as merchants might need the attention of the King to
their affairs. In a land like his with a marginal rainfall, pasturage
in particular areas often failed and the King would have to make
arrangements for pasturing the large flocks of sheep belonging to him
or to the various towns or temples. Sometimes, when conditions were
particularly bad, this might involve coming to an arrangement with a
neighbouring ruler to allow the flocks to cross into better-provided
territory. Even direct military action would sometimes be linked up
with agriculture, since there were times when measures had to be taken
to prevent raids upon the cultivated areas by nomadic peoples from the
desert.

The security of the land as a whole was in the last resort the
responsibility of the King, and it almost goes without saying that all
the purely military affairs of his State were under his direct
supervision. The King's responsibilities in this sphere of course
involved measures against possible enemies from outside, as well as the
maintenance of civil order within the State. For these purposes there
existed a standing army of about 10,000 arranged in basic units of 200
men. A large proportion of this standing army, about 4000 men, was
usually garrisoned in the capital. In case of major trouble the
standing army could be augmented by the levying of troops either from
the citizens of the towns or from tribesmen. As is often the case,
conscription of this kind was not always very popular, and various
vigorous means of persuasion sometimes had to be used. We find one of
the more drastic methods suggested by an official writing to the King,
on an occasion when the men of a certain area had been called up for
military service but were very slow in putting in an appearance. The
officer in charge of the matter wrote: 'If the King approves, let them
kill one of the guilty men, and cut off his head, and let them take it
round amongst those towns. . . , so that the people may be afraid and
will quickly assemble.' However, conscripts were not always so
reluctant. In another letter an official, reporting that two groups of
conscripts had arrived, said that they had no sickness amongst them and
nothing wrong at all. In fact, as the official put it: 'In this
campaign . . . there were no worries or anything of that sort, only
laughing and singing as though they were at home. Their morale is
good.'

All kinds of details would come to the King about his armed forces,
not only reports of broader issues such as actual engagements with the
enemy, but even such items as the attempted murder of one officer by
another. He would also of course receive intelligence reports about
troop movements in neighbouring States, of which the following is an
example:

To my lord Yasmakh-Adad say, thus says Warad-Sin. 'In the month of
Tamkhiri, on the twenty-first day, in the evening, they brought a
report from the town Yandikha in these terms, "The troops of the Man
[i.e. ruler] of Eshnunna are grouping in force in the town Mankisu."

Though a serious matter, such a report would by no means imply that
war was inevitable, since difficulties between States were more often
than not smoothed over by diplomatic exchanges. The most frequent use
of the army was not in war between States, but in actions to deal with
raids by the semi-nomadic tribesmen who still roamed the desert around
the fringes of the settled lands. As a protection against such raids
garrisons were posted at points along the border and in strategically
sited towns. To raise a general alarm in the event of a serious attack
at any point there was a special system. This involved a series of
fire-beacons spaced across the country, whereby in emergency a warning
could be rapidly flashed to the capital from the danger-point.

So far we have considered only that part of the life of Mari which
was primarily related to the King. It may be useful to supplement the
picture by what we know of other aspects of the life of the time.

We have very little evidence about the total population of Mari, but
it is unlikely to have been more than 100,000 and may have been
substantially less. It is well known that in Babylon at this time there
was a fairly clear-cut division of the population into three classes,
the awilum or full citizen, the mushkenum or second
class citizen, and the slave, who was not a citizen at all but a
chattel. How far this system was reflected in Mari is uncertain. There
were certainly slaves in Mari, and there were certainly noble families
which seem to have occupied a privileged position, but on the whole the
division between full and second-class citizens seems to have been less
evident than at Babylon. The population certainly included people
ranging from members of ancient families who had been in Mari since
Sumerian times to recent immigrants from the desert, but whether such
differences in origin were in general reflected in differences of
status we do not know.

The State of Mari as a whole had a predominantly agricultural basis,
but there were certain industries carried on in the towns particularly
at the capital itself, where there was considerable specialisation.
Amongst other things, the capital was noted for the superior quality of
the chariots made there. Census lists and other documents refer to
people by their trades, and we find men described as boatman,
carpenter, leather-worker, fisherman, potter or mason. Amongst other
professions and trades known at this time are those of metal-workers,
weavers, fullers, gem-cutters, jewellers, painters, and perfume-makers.
An analysis of the lists mentioned indicates that about one-fifth of
the population consisted of craftsmen, the remainder (apart of course
from officials) being labourers. Not only grown men and women but also
children of both sexes had to take their part in the work of the
nation.

Workers were sometimes paid wholly in the form of rations of corn,
wool, clothing, wine or oil, that is, their actual primary necessities.
Alternatively they might be paid wholly or partly in silver, though not
of course in coins, which were not invented until 1000 years later.
Where payment was in kind, the actual amounts of the daily rations of
the various commodities can sometimes be calculated. Thus we find, for
example, 'I gur 15 qa for two men who for forty-three
days dwelt in the house of the perfume-maker', which works out at about
two-and-a-half pints of oil each a day. If this seems excessive, it
should be remembered that this took the place both of edible fats and
butter in the diet, and of soap and hair-cream amongst toilet
accessories.

One of the industries carried on at Mari was tool production, and
the city must have had a good name for this as raw materials were sent
there from other places to be worked up. These tools were made of
copper or bronze. Other objects made from these metals at this time
included, to mention only a few things, swords, ploughshares, parts of
chariots, pots and pans (though only as luxury goods for wealthy
people), bangles, fish-hooks, needles, mirrors, braziers, tweezers, and
knives. The precious metals gold and silver had long been known, but
were too soft for anything except ornaments or valuable vessels, which
were usually destined for the temples or the King. Gold at this time
was worth four times as much as silver. Another metal used at the time,
and for which Mari served as a centre of distribution, was known in
Akkadian as anakum, which was either tin or lead. Iron is
occasionally mentioned, and has even been found in excavations, but in
only very small quantities, and was possibly used as jewellery, or more
probably as amulets with magical properties. The technological advances
which made possible the large-scale production of good quality iron had
not yet been achieved. The rarity of iron is confirmed by the fact that
a text of this period shows that the value of the metal was still twice
that of gold.

One important industry within the kingdom of Mari had its main
centre away from the capital. This was the production of bitumen, from
the famous bitumen lake near Hit, at the southern end of the kingdom.
The substance was produced in a liquid and a solid form, corresponding
roughly to tar and pitch. It was important as a building material
throughout the whole of Babylonia, being used as a damp course, as a
mortar, and (mixed with ground limestone or similar materials) for
surfacing floors or pavements.

Outside the towns, the great majority of the population was engaged
in some form of farming, either the cultivation of the soil or the
rearing of flocks of sheep or goats. Along the Middle Euphrates the
cultivation of most crops is impossible without irrigation, and the
irrigation system was perhaps the most vital part of the economy of the
kingdom of Mari. This was well recognised, and we find a governor
specifically pointing out to his King that 'if the waters are
interrupted, the land of my lord will starve'. The same official even
felt free to refuse the King's summons to the capital, on the plea that
he was needed to supervise irrigation works.

Indications are that the irrigated area extended to a depth of three
or four miles along the right (south) bank of the Euphrates for most of
the two hundred or so miles of the kingdom of Mari. There was a whole
network of canals, with special officials to supervise them, and in
time of necessity all the able-bodied men of a district, townsmen as
well as villagers, could be called out to work on them, either to clear
them of rushes and water-weeds or to dig out sections where silt had
accumulated or to build up and consolidate the banks against floods.

The staple crops of the kingdom were
barley and sesame (p. 68). The details of agricultural operations
depended upon the type of land, particularly upon whether it was virgin
soil or an established field, but in general work began in July or
August and involved two or three main stages. The first was deep
ploughing, if this was considered necessary. Then came some form of
harrowing or other process (such as rolling or hoeing) to break up the
surface clods; more than one of these operations might be necessary.
Finally, by December at the latest, came the sowing. This was done by
means of a seeder plough, a special implement with a funnel which
permitted the seed to be dropped directly into the furrow as it was
cut(37).

The rainfall in the Mari area is just under six inches a year,
falling mostly between December and February. This would be sufficient
to make the seed germinate, but irrigation was essential to keep the
crop growing. The barley would be ready for harvesting in May, when all
available labour, including children, would be called out to deal with
it.

The ploughs mentioned above were at this period drawn by oxen, which
were more important as draught animals than as food, though they were
eaten. It was oxen (not, as used to be thought, asses) which drew the
carts present in the famous Royal Tombs of Ur (c. 2600 B.C.). Cows were
milked, though they were of less importance in this respect than goats.

The other principal beast of burden at
this time was the ass, which usually carried its load as a pack, though
it might be used to draw a cart or as a riding beast. The horse, though
it had by this time been introduced to the Near East from farther
north, was still something of a novelty, and old-fashioned people
considered it not quite the thing for a king to be seen riding one. The
animal of highest economic importance in the kingdom of Mari (and
indeed throughout Babylonia) was, however, the sheep, closely followed
by the goat. These, provided their shepherds could save them from being
driven off by nomadic raiders, could, then as now, usually pick up a
living from patches of vegetation scattered about the desert, though
when these failed, as they sometimes did, special Government
arrangements might have to be made for grazing grounds elsewhere or the
provision of fodder. Sheep and goats together provided the main source
of meat, as well as the raw material for clothing and textiles. It is
also a reasonable assumption, judging by the situation elsewhere in the
Near East, that their milk was an important source of food, though
there seems to be no specific evidence for this from Mari.

Chapter IV

THE SCRIBE IN BABYLONIAN SOCIETY

WITHOUT doubt, the most important man in the ancient society of
Mesopotamia was the scribe. Kings might extend their sway over hitherto
unknown regions, merchants might organise the importation of rare
commodities from distant lands, the irrigation officials might set the
labourers to utilise the bountiful waters of the rivers and to bring
fertility to the soil, but without the scribe to record and transmit,
to pass on the detailed orders of the administrators, to provide the
astronomical data for controlling the calendar, to calculate the labour
force necessary for digging a canal or the supplies required by an
army, the co-ordination and continuity of all these activities could
never have been achieved. Ancient Mesopotamian civilisation was above
all a literate civilisation.

Writing began, so far as we know at present, in Sumer (southernmost
Mesopotamia) at about 3000 B.C., the earliest examples we possess
consisting of pictures drawn on lumps of clay(43). These earliest
examples of writing already show, in the view of some experts, a
certain development from what must have been the original form of the
pictures, and there is the possibility that there may have been an even
earlier stage of writing, of which we have no direct trace. This could
have been used either in Sumer itself on some material, such as palm
leaves, which has perished, or in the still unidentified earlier home
of the Sumerians.

We cannot yet read the earliest writing discovered, and so cannot be
sure beyond doubt what language it was intended to represent. The
archaeological evidence gives, however, good reason to suppose that it
was a form of the language we call Sumerian.

Despite the difficulties involved in dealing with a dead language
apparently unconnected with any other known tongue, considerable
advances have been made in the understanding of Sumerian during the
past forty years. It was a language of the type which we call
'agglutinative' (meaning 'gluing together'), that is, instead of
inflecting its roots like most of the languages we are familiar with,
it kept all its roots unchanged and glued bits on to alter the sense.
The earliest writing simply used pictures to represent whatever was to
be noted down. This was quite straightforward as long as a storekeeper
simply wanted to make a note such as 'five pigs', which might be
represented as something like

but to draw pictures of verbs would
generally be more difficult. The Sumerian inventors of writing often
got over the difficulty by drawing some concrete object to suggest the
idea of the verb. Thus, since a leg is used for either walking or
standing, the picture of a leg could be used for the verbs 'to walk'
and 'to stand'.

The picture of a head, with the mouth emphasised and a piece of
bread alongside it, clearly represented the idea 'to eat'. A bird
sitting on an egg was one way of indicating the idea 'to give birth'.

A class of words that a scribe would very often have to write, from
the earliest invention of writing, would be personal names, which would
obviously need to be entered in connection with temple receipts and
ration issues. If a person delivering produce to the temple stores had
a good straightforward name, which constituted a short sentence in
Sumerian, there may have been no difficulty, since the elements of his
name could be written with the ordinary Sumerian pictograms. Other
names, however, especially if they were non-Sumerian, might well be
meaningless to the scribe and so would prove impossible to write in
pictograms. The only way the scribe could get round the difficulty was
to divide the name up into syllables and represent each syllable by the
Sumerian pictogram sounding most like that syllable. The principle was
rather like taking a name such as 'Digby', which has no meaning in
modern English, and representing it by pictures denoting 'dig' and
'bee'. This device was rather easier to apply widely with Sumerian than
it would be with English, since most Sumerian words were of a single
syllable.

A Sumerian writing sign used in this
way with reference only to its sound and with no thought of the object
it originally represented is known by us as a 'syllogram'. The same
sign could of course be a pictogram or syllogram according to how it
was used. Actually the Sumerian scribes very rapidly simplified the
forms of their original pictograms so that soon most of them were no
longer recognisable as pictures at all (39). At this stage the
word 'pictogram' is no longer appropriate, so the term 'ideogram' or
logogram' is used instead. The principle remains, however, and the same
sign could be an ideogram or syllogram according to how the scribe used
it.

As the idea developed of using writing for more complicated matters
than simple lists, the system of using syllograms was developed to give
greater precision in other directions. At first, a written sentence was
only a very crude approximation to the spoken sentence, since all the
little elements of speech with such meanings as 'of', 'to', 'with',
'from', and so on, could not be shown. To take an example, the ideogram
for 'king' was pronounced LUGALA (or possibly just LUGAL), and in
actual Sumerian speech 'of the king' and 'to the king' would have been
respectively LUGAL-AK and LUGALA-RA (or something very close to these
forms). In the earliest writing these suffixes would have been ignored,
and whether the scribe wanted to indicate 'of the king', 'to the king',
or any of the other forms mentioned, he would simply have written the
ideogram LUGALA and left it to the reader of the document to decide
from the general situation which form was meant. (We know from our
practice of omitting corresponding words in telegrams that this does
not make writing unintelligible, though it certainly limits its scope.)
As long as only simple things were written in Sumerian the original
system caused no difficulty, but as attempts were made to write down
more complicated matters, ambiguity might arise. The Sumerians, having
already invented the conception of the syllogram in connection with
personal names, overcame the difficulty by using the same principle.
Let us suppose a Sumerian scribe wished to represent, without any
possibility of ambiguity, 'to the king', LUGALA-RA. No sign yet existed
for RA meaning 'to', but there was a verb RA meaning 'to hit', which
had an ideogram. By using the ideogram RA 'to hit' but ignoring its
original meaning and thinking only of its sound, the scribe could
easily represent LUGALA-RA 'to the king'. (Once this system had become
established, LUGALA-RA could not be mistaken for a sentence meaning
'the king hit', since in living Sumerian speech the latter would have
several other elements, which would now have to be written out if such
a sentence were intended.)

In the long run, the most important consequence of the use of
syllograms was the possibility which it provided of accurately
representing languages other than Sumerian. The principal language
concerned here was the Semitic language which we call Akkadian. By 2500
B.C. there was a strong Semitic element in Mesopotamia, and it was a
great convenience to be able to represent in writing the language of
the people concerned. For simple or conventional statements, writing in
ideograms would do as well for Akkadian as for Sumerian. Writing purely
by ideograms could, however, become very ambiguous for more complicated
statements in Akkadian, and so syllabic writing often proved essential.
In consequence of the use of the syllabic principle, Akkadian was being
written by 2400 B.C., and was used for quite extensive inscriptions a
century later. By the Old Babylonian period (the beginning of the
second millennium), Akkadian could be written in syllabic cuneiform so
conveniently that we find not only law-codes, business documents,
literary works and religious compositions written in it, but also
thousands of official and private letters.

Writing had begun as a means of recording economic data (receipts
and issues of goods by the temple authorities) but it soon began to
prove a suitable instrument for other purposes. Just as many people in
our own culture collect and classify stamps or match-box labels, so
also the Sumerian scribes had a passion for collecting, but what they
collected and put into systematic order was data about their own
civilisation, in particular their religion, their languages and their
economy. Students learnt the use of cuneiform writing by copying such
lists. As early as the second quarter of the third millennium the
scribes were already writing catalogues of the names of gods, and of
more mundane things such as animals and household objects. This process
was continued and developed, ultimately giving what are in fact
extensive dictionaries ,of Sumerian and Akkadian, which have proved of
the greatest value to modern Assyriologists in increasing their
understanding of those languages.

it may seem strange, but the scribes did not begin to use writing to
any considerable extent for what we would call 'literature' until 1000
years after writing had first been invented. This is, however, not as
odd as it at first appears. Ancient literature was something to be
recited and heard, not something to be read silently. A comparison with
music may make the ancient attitude clear. Music can be reduced to a
score and read by anyone who has received an adequate training; but
most of us would take the view that a musical composition cannot be
said to have been realised unless actually played by performers. The
same attitude was held by early peoples in relation to literature: it
only had real existence when recited (perhaps with accompanying mime)
before an audience. As long as Sumerian culture was fully living, its
literature was transmitted orally from a competent reciter (perhaps
employed in the Court or the temple) to his students; there was no need
to write down such compositions.

Just after 2000 B.C., however, Sumerian literary compositions
-suddenly begin to appear in large numbers, so that about 5000 Sumerian
literary tablets or fragments of tablets are now known. Our knowledge
of Sumerian literature depends almost entirely on the products of this
period. The reason for the changed situation is largely that the
Sumerian language was rapidly becoming extinct. As a result, the
literary tradition could no longer be transmitted ,orally as
previously, and could only be reliably preserved in written form. The
tendency to commit texts to writing was reinforced by the need of
students to make a special study of a language which was vital to their
cultural tradition, but which was no longer learnt at their mother's
knee and automatically used in the business of everyday life.

For the purpose of training scribes in Sumerian there were schools.
There must have been schools of some kind throughout most of the third
millennium, since some of the earliest examples of writing yet found
have amongst them lists of signs apparently drawn up for scribal
practice. It is, however, in the first quarter of the second millennium
B.C. that we have our most extensive information about scribal schools.
This information comes in the form of texts written in Sumerian by
people trained in those very schools, giving a detailed account of what
went on in them. In the recovery and translation of these texts two
modern scholars, S. N. Kramer of Philadelphia and C. J. Gadd of the
British Museum and London University, stand out, and what follows is
based almost entirely on their research.

It is clear in the first place that education was not in practice
available to all, but was largely a privilege restricted to the
children (probably only sons, though daughters were not necessarily
excluded) of the wealthy and influential, who could afford to maintain
their children non-productively for a long period. The examination of
the parentage of several hundred scribes shows that they were all sons
of such men as governors, senior civil servants, priests or scribes. An
occasional poor boy or orphan might be lucky enough to be sent to
school if he were adopted by a wealthy man.

It has sometimes been assumed that schools were necessarily attached
to temples. This may well have been the case in some places and at some
periods, but it was certainly not so for the period just after 2000
B.C. This is quite clear, because at this time such literary documents
as we have all come from houses, not from temples. A number of
buildings have been found which their excavators claimed, from their
layout or the presence of school tablets near by, might have been
school rooms. The most convincing of the buildings for which such
claims have been made are two rooms, complete with benches, found at
Mari(40).

The school was known as 'the tablet
house'. We do not at present know at exactly what age formal education
began. An ancient tablet refers to it as 'early youth', but except that
this would probably mean at an age less than about ten, this is not
very revealing. The pupil was, at least in his early years, a day boy.
He lived at home, got up at sunrise, collected his lunch from his
mother, and hurried off to school. If he happened to arrive late he was
duly caned, and the same fate awaited him for any misdemeanour during
school hours, or for failure to perform his exercises adequately. At
school education consisted of copying out texts, and probably learning
them off by heart. All this appears from an actual contemporary
document. The document begins with the question: 'Son of the tablet
house, where did you go in your early days?' The student replies:

I went to the tablet house; ...

I read out my tablet, ate my lunch,

Prepared my (fresh) tablet, inscribed it (and) finished it...

When the tablet house was dismissed, I went home.

I entered (my) house. My father was sitting there.

I read over my tablet to him and he was pleased...

The Sumerian document gives some idea of the staffing of the school.
At the top was the Headmaster, whose Sumerian titles meant literally
'the Expert' or 'the Father of the Tablet House'. Assisting him there
was apparently a form-master, as well as specialists in particular
subjects, such as Sumerian and mathematics. There seems also to have
been a system of what might be called prefects or pupil-teachers,
senior students called 'Big Brothers' who were responsible for knocking
a certain amount of sense and Sumerian into the heads of their juniors.
However, by the time the new pupil reached the middle school, and had
begun to get hold of the rudiments of the scribal art, he would no
longer stand in quite such awe of his 'Big Brother', and would begin to
show that he had a will of his own. One of the texts amusingly shows
how insubordination of this kind could cause such a disturbance that it
finally called down the heavy hand of the Headmaster.

An interesting detail of school life which Professor Kramer has very
recently discovered is the amount of time which the students had off
each month. In a tablet from Ur a student says

The reckoning of my monthly stay in the tablet house is (as
follows):

My days of freedom are three per month,

Its festivals are three days per month.

Within it, twenty-four days per month

(Is the time of) my living in the tablet house. They are long days.

The school curriculum was long and rigorous, beginning, as we have
seen, in 'early youth' (at eight or nine?) and going on to maturity.
The first thing the student had to do was to become proficient in
Sumerian. This involved copying out and memorising the long lists of
names, technical terms, legal phrases, and so on, which had grown up in
the course of the third millennium B.C. There were also texts dealing
with Sumerian grammar, and others which served as dictionaries, giving
Sumerian words with the Akkadian equivalents. The study of these also
involved copying and memorising. Mathematics was an important part of
the curriculum, for a scribe would have to know how to survey a field,
or keep accounts, or calculate the number of bricks needed for a
temple, or the supplies for an army.

There exists one fragment of a text which some people think is a
record of a student's examination, though unfortunately its broken
condition leaves the exact sense in doubt. If it is to be taken in this
way, it seems that the student was first asked to write out an exercise
and afterwards to inscribe his name in the special archaic script
employed for inscriptions cut in stone. With this successfully achieved
the student was told 'You are a scribe', and was warned against
conceit. It seems likely that this particular examination was one which
the student had to take before he was allowed to proceed to more
advanced work. The student, having made adequate progress in the
fundamentals of his craft and being now regarded as a junior scribe,
could go on to study works of Sumerian literature, and might possibly
even attempt to produce original compositions.

Not all scribes, of course, acquired the same degree of competence.
Some might be able to do no more than write out contracts or letters,
which normally employed largely syllabic writings and would be
relatively easy for a Babylonian or Assyrian trained to write in
cuneiform. At the other end of the scribal scale would c the men able
to deal with difficult religious texts, some of whom produced texts
which, either from the extensive use of rare ideograms, or the
employment of a difficult style or rare words, have not yet been fully
elucidated by modern experts.

Once qualified, scribes (as a class) had a wide range of possible
professions awaiting them, though the actual choice open to any
particular scribe was very much limited, and would probably be largely
settled by his family connections. Indeed, it was regarded decreed by
the god Enlil that a man should follow his father's profession.
Probably all classes of priests received an initial training as
scribes, though as the qualifications for the priesthood were more
rigorous than those for scribal training, not every category of
priesthood was open to every scribe. Diviners, for example, had to be
of good birth and good physique, as indeed did anyone with any office
in the temple, even in the first millennium B.C. Broken teeth, a squint
or a limp or any such disability would disqualify a man for such
offices.

Amongst the men at the top of the scribal profession were the
high-ranking priests who presided at the great temple festivals: there
are known a number of the rituals which they made use of in the course
of their duties, and these texts, largely written in ideograms which
served to make the understanding of them more difficult to anyone who
had not been trained in this type of text generally contain a final
note to the effect that only the initiated shall be allowed to see it.

Since so many commercial transactions
required an accompanying written document, most scribes must have been
concerned mainly with activities of this kind. One may probably think
of some of them as sitting in the market-place ready to assist in any
business transactions taking place. Others were in government or temple
service. Any official of importance, whether serving the temples or the
King, would have one or more scribes on his staff, accompanying him and
ready to take down memoranda, or to do the necessary calculations in
connection with assessments of taxes, ration issues and so on. A
Babylonian official without a scribe was as handicapped as a modern
business executive when his private secretary goes sick. In a letter of
the sixth century we find a temple official, writing from some outlying
part of the temple estates to the central administration, saying, 'As
to the 200 hired men for whom I am responsible, though I brought the
silver and wool (for their wages), I could not issue it to them without
a scribe. The scribe and the (account) list are there with you.' Since
this official had managed to have the letter written from which we have
quoted, we have to conclude either that officials sometimes wrote their
own letters, or that there was a strict division of function between
different classes of scribes, so that one available for correspondence
could not be expected to work out calculations of ration issues for
which another man was responsible.

Scribes also accompanied military
expeditions. Commanders would need scribes to write dispatches home,
and we have in fact many letters actually written from a battlefield,
including one which is specifically said to have been 42 Scribes
written during the very engagement when the great gate of Babylon was
being forced, during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III. Scribes were
also needed by the army both as quartermasters for the issue of rations
and equipment and as accountants for the listing of booty. Several
bas-reliefs show scribes noting down the claims of Assyrian warriors as
to their prowess in battle and the number of their victims (42); some
of these bas-reliefs make it appear that one of the scribes is writing
on a clay tablet, whilst another is using some material, either
parchment or papyrus, in scroll form. Another writing medium sometimes
used for cuneiform script consisted of ivory boards with a coating of
wax soft enough to take the impression of a stylus; a series of such
boards might be hinged together(41).

Another profession which required some scribal training was that of
medicine. Doctors had to be literate, as there were collections of
medical documents on clay tablets which were obviously their textbooks.
The copies known to us mostly date from after 1000 B.C. but they can be
shown to go back to originals from the Old Babylonian period (early
second millennium). These medical documents were made up mainly of
lists of symptoms and prescriptions. The symptoms are listed in the
form 'If a man has a pain in his belly' (or some other part of his
body), and the text then goes into details of the patient's trouble.
The kind of things that might be mentioned were whether the man's skin
felt hot or cold, nether his pulse was rapid or his veins swollen,
whether there was any inflammation or redness or whether the patient
had a cough or a headache or felt dizzy. There then followed a note on
the appropriate treatment. Various herbs or minerals might be used, and
could be administered in various ways. They might be mixed with
something such as beer and then swallowed, or applied in the form of a
lotion or an ointment or even as an enema.

Details of such surgery as the Babylonian and Assyrian doctors were
capable of performing seem never to have been committed to writing by
the scribes, and we know very little about this.

An important part of the curriculum in the scribal schools was
mathematics, and it was in the Old Babylonian period, the period at
which we are best acquainted with the scribal schools, that Babylonian
mathematics reached a pinnacle of achievement which was not to be
attained again until another millennium and a half had passed.

The Sumerians had, at the very beginning of writing, already devised
symbols for numerals and two systems of counting, one (the decimal)
based on ten as the unit, and the other (the sexagesimal) based on
sixty. The two systems were not mutually exclusive, and in ordinary use
both were employed together without causing any confusion, just as
alongside the decimal system we use (for money and linear measurement)
a system based on twelve.

By the Old Babylonian period the forms of the symbols used for
numbers were as follows

At some periods and in some types of
text 60 was denoted by the sign. This is, of course, the same sign
as that for 1, and it might be thought that this would have led to
endless confusion. A comparison with our own system of numerals will
show that this was not necessarily so. Our symbol for 'ten' is
precisely the same as our sym o -or one, name '1'. It is true that if
we want to indicate exactly ten we put a nought after it, but the
nought symbol does not occur in any other number in the 'ten' series.
It is the 'I' (placed in a special position) which is the vital part of
the symbol for 'ten', not the whole group '10'; if the '0' were an
essential part of the 'ten' symbol we should for 'fifteen' have to
write 105 (which is exactly what small children do before they
understand our numeral system). 'Fifteen' and 'fifty-one' in our system
use exactly the same symbols, but in a different order. It was the use
of a corresponding system (the ancestor of our own, in fact) which
saved the Babylonians from being confused byto denote either
'one' or 'sixty'. The convention was that denoted 'sixty plus
ten' (i.e. seventy), whereas meant 'ten plus one' (i.e. eleven).

'One hundred' could be represented as 'sixty plus forty', according
to the system above, or written with the sign , pronounced me,
which is simply a form of the Semitic word for 'hundred'. There was a
special sign for '1000', and another for 3600, which is 60 x 60 and so
the highest term in the sexagesimal system.

Babylonian mathematical methods were basically algebraic, and the
Babylonian mathematicians of the Old Babylonian period were able to
calculate such values of numbers as square roots and cube roots, of
which tables have been found, and to solve quadratic equations.

There follows an example of an actual problem on an Old Babylonian
clay tablet, with its solution. The text reads:

I have added the surface of my two squares: 28;20.

(The side of) one square is a quarter (the side of) the (other)
square.

You put down 4 and 1.

You multiply 4 by 4: 16.

You multiply 1 by 1: 1.

You add 1 and 16: 17.

The reciprocal of 17 cannot be solved.

What must I put to 17 [i.e. What must I multiply 17 by] which will
give me 28;20? 1;40.

This is the square of 10.

You raise 10 by 4 and 40 is (the side of) one square.

You raise 10 by I and 10 is (the side of) the second square.

The Babylonian solution of this problem is much simpler than the
literal translation at first suggests. It can be explained by using
modern algebraic symbols, though it must be emphasised that though this
follows the way in which the Babylonian probably thought, it does not
follow the way in which he wrote it down.

The number 28;20 is written in the sexagesimal system, that is, the
'20' represents twenty times one, and the '28' represents twenty-eight
times sixty. The 'surface' of the squares means their area.

Let us call the length of the side of the larger square x, and of
the smaller square y. The data therefore gives us the equations:

x2+y2=28;20

x=4y

Take y as 1n

Then x=4n

x2= 16n2

y2= ln2

x2+y2=17n2 =28;20

n2=28;20/17=1;40

n=10

x= 10x4=40

y=10x1=10

As to their geometrical knowledge, it may be mentioned that the
Babylonian mathematicians knew the value of Pi very accurately, taking
it as 3 1/8. Some cuneiform tablets are known which deal with the areas
of geometrical figures (44).

Another of the Babylonian scribal activities, related to
mathematics, was astronomy. The Babylonians had two reasons for paying
particular attention to the movements of the heavenly bodies. One was
the need to regulate the calendar so that agricultural operations could
be efficiently planned, and the other was the theory that events upon
earth were either a reflection of, or at least directly related to,
events in the sky. In the sky, in fact, the Babylonians thought they
could actually see what the gods were doing. As early as the Old
Babylonian period we have lists of observations of Venus covering
several years. Eclipses of sun and moon could not fail to be noticed,
and were recorded, at least spasmodically, from an early date. From the
middle of the eighth century B.C. (precisely 747 B.C. according to a
Greek astronomer of nine centuries later) systematic records of
eclipses were kept, and these records, extending over centuries,
eventually made it possible to calculate the movements (or apparent
movements) of the sun, moon and planets relative to each other and
across the sky. The details of this are, however, too complex and
difficult to discuss here.

The scribal activity most likely to
find an echo in modern man is ancient Mesopotamian literature (the word
being used here in the narrow sense of something worth reading, not
something which happened to be written). Much of this has been
preserved for us in the great library collected at Nineveh by
Ashurbanipal and his successors, but other important works, both in
Sumerian and Akkadian, have been found at a number of other sites, some
of them far outside the boundaries of ancient Babylonia or Assyria.

The best known of these ancient literary works is the Epic of
Gilgamesh, available in several translations in English, some good,
others less than good. We do not know who composed this any more than
(with one possible exception) we know who composed any other piece of
ancient Mesopotamian literature. There were, indeed, at least four or
five older Sumerian stories about Gilgamesh in circulation. The
underlying Sumerian stories are separate tales dealing with different
aspects of the traditions of Gilgamesh. The Babylonian poet has
integrated these Sumerian compositions and created a tragedy, a single
story which moves relentlessly forward to its final conclusion, that
man's lot has been decreed by the gods, and that man is powerless to
resist the working of the divinely ordained order.

Gilgamesh was a priest-king of the city of Uruk (Biblical Erech) in
the Early Dynastic period (about 2600 B.C.). This period was in the
very shadow-land of tradition, and beyond it lay the period of the
gods, so that Gilgamesh himself was said to be two-thirds divine.

According to a fragment of the epic in Hittite, Gilgamesh was of
gigantic proportions; his height was about sixteen feet and his chest
measurement in proportion (49). As the story begins Gilgamesh, likened
to a wild bull, and described as the shepherd of Uruk, is acting
oppressively towards his
fellow-citizens.

The gods considered the matter, and ordered the goddess Aruru to
make a rival to him. This she did, in the form of a wild man Enkidu,
whom she placed in the steppe-land, where he lived with the beasts of
the field. There a hunter saw him, and reported to his father that this
formidable creature was making it impossible for him to catch the game.
The matter finally came to Gilgamesh, who decided to send a prostitute
to ensnare Enkidu. The hunter took the lady to the watering place in
the steppe-land, where she awaited the coming of Enkidu with the
animals. As soon as the wild man arrived, the prostitute exposed
herself to him; Enkidu fell in love with her, and they made love
together for six days and seven nights. But when Enkidu, his desire at
last satiated, sought to join the wild beasts again, they fled from
him. Perforce Enkidu had to go back to the woman, who persuaded him to
return with her to Uruk. She described the splendour of city life, and
inspired in him a desire to meet Gilgamesh. Meanwhile in Uruk the
Sun-god had sent to Gilgamesh a dream, foretelling the coming from the
steppe-land of one like himself, who should become his comrade. Enkidu
entered the city, challenged Gilgamesh, and wrestled with him:

They met in the market-place of the land.

Enkidu barred the gate with his foot,

And would not allow Gilgamesh to enter.

They grappled with each other, butting like bulls.

They shattered the doorpost, so that the wall trembled.

....................

As Gilgamesh bent his knee, with his foot still on the ground, His
rage left him, and he turned away.

When he had turned away, Enkidu said to him, to Gilgamesh,

....................

Your head is raised above (all other) men;

Enlil has granted you the kingship over the people.'

The two became fast friends.

The idea now came to Gilgamesh of
going to the cedar forest to destroy the monster Huwawa (or Humbaba),
whom the god Enlil had appointed to protect the forest against mankind.
(In economic terms one may perhaps interpret this as the beginning of
the large-scale exploitation of the forests of the Zagros.) Enkidu
attempted to dissuade his friend, though without success, and the two,
armed with great axes and swords which no ordinary man could even lift,
set off, after duly consulting the omens.

At last the heroes reached the forest, which struck them with awe:

They stood, and they gazed at the forest;

They kept looking at the height of the cedars,

They kept looking at the entrance to
the forest.

Where Humbaba used to walk there was a path made;

The tracks ran straight; the way

was well looked after.

They saw the cedar mountain,

the dwelling place of the gods',

the throne of the goddess Irnini.

The heroes rested for the night, and in the morning they entered the
forest and began to fell the cedars. This aroused and enraged the
guardian Humbaba, but with the aid of his patron the Sun-god, Gilgamesh
was able to overcome him.

The text is broken at this point. Where it resumes, the scene has
shifted back to Uruk, where Gilgamesh, cleansed from his journey, has
put on his most splendid raiment. Ishtar, the goddess of love(50), was
overcome by the sight of his virile beauty, and offered herself to him,
with the promise of luxury, wealth, and pre-eminence amongst rulers.
Gilgamesh rejected the offer, narrating somewhat caddishly the fate of
previous lovers of Ishtar. The rejected goddess went off in a rage to
her father Anu, the supreme god, and complained to him

My father, Gilgamesh keeps pouring insults upon me,

and by means of threats induced her father to create the Bull of
Heaven to destroy Gilgamesh. But terrible as the bull was to ordinary
men, Enkidu seems to have vaulted over the bull's horns (in a manner
often depicted in Minoan art, 85) and grasped it by the thick of the
tail. The point of this was presumably to steer the brute into a
position where Gilgamesh could finish it off. Gilgamesh managed to
drive his dagger into the upper part of the of monster's neck, and so
killed it. Ishtar, watching from the walls of the city, shrieked out a
curse and assembled all the temple-women in lamentation. For Gilgamesh
and Enkidu, however, this was a time of triumph, and they rode
(presumably on donkeys, since horses were not yet known in Mesopotamia)
through ranks of admiring citizens lining the streets of Uruk. A great
celebration followed. But in the night Enkidu had a dream, in which he
saw the gods in council. The supreme three, Anu, Enlil and Ea, together
with the Sun-god Shamash, the patron of Gilgamesh, discussed the
matter, and despite the opposition of Shamash decreed that, because of
the killing of Humbaba and the Heavenly Bull, Enkidu must die. Enkidu
fell ill, and as the end approached he regretted the events which had
taken him from the steppe-land, and called down curses on the hunter
and the prostitute. But the Sun-god pointed out the blessings of
civilisation to which the prostitute had brought him, and Enkidu became
calm, and turned his curse to a blessing. Before he died Enkidu had
another dream, in which there was revealed to him the nature of the
Underworld, the place of the Afterlife. In the dream, said Enkidu, he
was met by a being who changed him so that his arms were covered with
feathers like those of a bird. His guide took him down to a house of
gloom, a house from which the person who enters never comes forth, from
which there is no road back. Here the people were all like birds, and
lived in gloom, with dust and clay as their food.

Finally Enkidu died. Gilgamesh
lamented bitterly over his friend, and performed for him the
appropriate last rites. Then there came upon Gilgamesh the realisation
that he too must in the end die like Enkidu. Like every man, when this
truth first came to him he could not accept it, and sought a means by
which to avoid the human lot. There was a primeval ancestor,
Uta-napishtim, who had escaped mortality, and to him Gilgamesh would
go, to learn his secret.

Gilgamesh walked to the mountains of
Mashu, which the Sumerians thought of as forming a ring round the
earth, and reached one of the gates at the edge of the world provided
for the rising and setting of the sun. The scorpion-people(51),
appointed as guards, recognised him as part divine, and allowed
Gilgamesh to pass. He travelled on through thick darkness for eleven
hours, and then at last the dawn broke. In another two hours he came
into the full light of day, and found himself in a garden with trees
bearing precious stones. Here he met the friendly Sun-god, who warned
him that his quest would be without avail. But Gilgamesh went on, and
presently came to the lady Siduri, who kept the inn at the edge of the
Abyss. She received him kindly, but warned him that no one but the
Sun-god could ever cross that sea. Nevertheless Uta-napishtim had a
ferryman, Urshanabi, at present in the woods near by, and by his help
Gilgamesh might cross. Gilgamesh met Urshanabi, who instructed
Gilgamesh what to do. It was necessary to punt across the centre of the
Abyss, but the waters there were waters of death, and no drop must
touch Gilgamesh. 'Therefore Gilgamesh was instructed to cut down 120
trees and prepare them as punting poles. The two embarked, and when
they reached the danger area Urshanabi ordered Gilgamesh to punt, using
each pole once only to avoid contact with the waters of death. When the
last pole had been used the boat reached safe waters, within sight of
Uta-napishtim, who looked in amazement at the unexpected stranger. Upon
arrival Gilgamesh gave an account of himself and his desire to avoid
death. Uta-napishtim in reply pointed out the impermanence of all human
life and institutions, but Gilgamesh pointed out:

I keep looking at you, Uta-napishtim,

Your appearance is no different, you are like me;

And you yourself are not different, you are like me;

..................

Tell me how it is that you stand in the assembly of the gods, (and)
have life.

Uta-napishtim thereupon gave Gilgamesh the story of the Deluge,
which had resulted in his being granted eternal life. He had lived in
the city of Shurippak on the Euphrates. The gods decided to permit
Enlil to destroy mankind by a great flood, but the god Ea, however,
revealed the secret to Uta-napishtim by whispering to the reed-hut in
which the hero slept, and gave instructions for the making of a ship.
Uta-napishtim had the ship built and provisioned, and filled it not
only with specimens of all living creatures, as in the Biblical story
of Noah, but also with craftsmen: the Sumerians realised that without
craftsmen civilisation as they knew it would be impossible. At last the
heavens and the subterranean water channels were opened, there was a
great tempest, and the whole earth and everything on it was submerged
and drowned. Even the gods were terrified and fled to the highest
heaven. When the destruction was complete, the storm abated, and the
ship grounded on a mountain. Uta-napishtim, like Noah, sent out birds
to seek for dry land, and at last he knew that the waters had subsided
sufficiently for him to release his cargo of animals and to leave the
shi . He himself offered a sacrifice upon the mountain, and the hungry
gods, who had received no smoke offering since the flood began, came
clustering round. But Enlil was furious that his plan for the total
destruction of mankind had not been carried through. Ea, however,
succeeded in calming the angry god by pointing out that there were
other means of controlling mankind than total destruction; were there
not wild beasts, famine and disease to control the population? The
divine wrath should not be indiscriminate but should have a moral
basis:

On the sinner impose his sin; on the transgressor impose his
transgression.

Enlil saw the reasonableness of this, went into the ship and called
Uta-napishtim and his wife to him. Then, as Uta-napishtim described it,

He touched our foreheads and stood between us (and) blessed us,
(Saying),

'Formerly Uta-napishtim was human.

Now Uta-napishtim and his wife shall become gods, like us.

Uta-napishtim shall dwell far away, at the mouth of the rivers.'

They took me and let me dwell far away, at the mouth of the rivers.

Uta-napishtim went on to point out that there was no one to do this
for Gilgamesh, and challenged him to show himself able to conquer his
human frailty in even such a small matter as being able to resist sleep
for six days and seven nights. But even as he sat there, Gilgamesh,
exhausted from his wandering, succumbed to a heavy sleep. Uta-napishtim
realised that Gilgamesh would claim only to have fallen into a brief
doze, and so set his wife to bake bread each day and set it beside the
sleeping hero. This she did, and when Gilgamesh awoke and began t6
excuse himself for what he thought had been a short nap, Uta-napishtim
pointed out the heaps of bread to him. There it was, in all stages from
bread still cooking on the coals, through bread that was beginning to
go mouldy, to dried-up crusts of a week ago. Gilgamesh was compelled to
acknowledge his failure, and to accept his human lot. Utanapishtim told
the ferryman Urshanabi to wash Gilgamesh and give him new clothing, and
then take him back to Uruk. But just as the wanderer was leaving, the
wife of Uta-napishtim persuaded her husband not to let him go back
empty-handed, whereupon Uta-napishtim gave him the secret of a magic
plant with thorns, called 'Old-man-becomes-young', growing at the
bottom of the sea. This plant would give Gilgamesh eternal youth. In
the manner of a pearl-diver Gilgamesh fixed heavy stones to himself,
which dragged him down to the bottom of the water. There he found the
plant, and, cutting off the stones which held him down, was thrown up
on to the shore, where he continued his journey, by land, still
accompanied by Urshanabi. But even after obtaining the magic plant
Gilgamesh was to be frustrated. On the way home the hero stopped to
bathe in a pool of cold water, and in his absence a snake came and
stole the plant. Gilgamesh bitterly lamented his total failure to alter
his human lot of old age and death, and returned with Urshanabi
empty-handed to Uruk. But if he had lost the possibility of escape from
the human lot, Gilgamesh could still rejoice in the sight of human
achievements, and we finally see him pointing out to Urshanabi the
splendours of Uruk, the great centre of early Sumerian civilisation.

Amongst the other better preserved epics extant in Akkadian are the
Epic of Adapa and the Epic of Etana. Adapa was a fisherman in the
service of Ea, the Water-god who was also god of Wisdom and patron of
the city of Eridu. Some scholars have tried, not very convincingly, to
relate the name 'Adapa' to the Biblical name 'Adam'. One day Adapa was
out in his boat fishing, when the south wind gave him a ducking. In
revenge, Adapa, by a magical spell which he had no doubt learnt in the
service of Ea, broke the wing of the south wind, which could then no
longer blow. After a week the supreme god Anu noticed the absence of
the south wind and made enquiries. Upon learning the facts, he gave
orders for Adapa to appear before him in heaven. Ea took care, however,
that Adapa did not go without the benefit of his advice and inside
knowledge. Adapa was to put on mourning, and when questioned on this by
the two door-keepers of heaven he was to reply that he was in mourning
for two gods who had disappeared from the earth. Since the two
door-keepers were the gods in question this would at once gain Adapa
their good word. Moreover, Anu would offer Adapa bread and water which
were the bread and water of death; these he must on no account eat or
drink.

The first part of Ea's plan was
successful. Adapa explained that since the south wind had capsized him
without warning he had had a severe provocation. The two divine
door-keepers, duly flattered at Adapa's respect for their memory, also
put in a good word for Adapa, and Ann was won over. Deciding to grant
Adapa immortality, he offered him not, as Ea had anticipated, the bread
and water of death but the bread and water of life. Unaware of the true
nature of the food Anu was offering, and remembering Ea's advice, Adapa
refused to eat or drink. Anu, recognising what was in Adapa's mind,
laughed at him, and telling him that by his refusal he had thrown away
the chance of immortality, sent him back to earth.

The other epic mentioned, the Epic of Etana, is related to
acceptance in early Sumerian thought of hereditary kingship as one of
the values of civilisation. To give mankind security, the gods had sent
kingship down from heaven, and settled it upon the pious Etana. But
Etana had no heir, even though he sacrificed daily to the Sun-god
Shamash. Shamash arranged for Etana to befriend an eagle who had fallen
foul of a serpent, and the grateful eagle carried Etana up to heaven in
quest of the plant of birth. At present we do not know how the epic
ended, but a new edition of the text is in preparation by J. V. Kinnier
Wilson of Cambridge University, who has found some important new
sections.

There is space only for a passing reference to other epics and myths
known, more or less completely, in Akkadian or Sumerian versions. There
are, for example, quite a number of fragments of myths of creation.
Another quaint little myth explains the origin of toothache: it was due
to a worm which at the Creation objected to having fruit as its food
and asked the gods to allow it to suck the gums at the roots of the
teeth. Another myth, known after its hero as Atrakhasis, is in
part parallel to the Deluge story. The Myth of Zu concerns the
attempt of a minor Bird-god called Zu (or possibly Anzu) to gain
supremacy in the pantheon by stealing an insignia called the Tablets of
Destiny: after initial success Zu (or Anzu) was pursued and defeated by
another god. A myth known as the Myth of Erra was specially
related to the city of Babylon and the recital of this myth served, it
was believed, to ward off epidemics. There are also important epics
containing traditions of the dynasty of Agade, including one dealing
with the birth and upbringing of Sargon of Agade himself.

Purely Sumerian myths, though of great interest in themselves, lie
outside the scope of the present book. The reader who is interested in
these will find a most readable and authoritative account of them in S.
N. Kramer's Sumerian Mythology (Harper Torchbooks, 1961).

A class of literature quite different from what we have been
discussing is that which we know as Wisdom Literature. This category
will be familiar to most readers, since there are examples of it in the
Bible, in the books of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes. Wisdom
Literature ranged from earthy proverbial sayings bandied about amongst
peasants to highly sophisticated discussions of what we should call
philosophical or theological problems. The kind of problems discussed
were aspects of the questions, what is the purpose of life and why does
seemingly unmerited suffering occur? There were three major works on
these themes in Akkadian, though scarcely any traces in Sumerian. The
most striking of the compositions of this kind was the poem called in
Akkadian Ludlul bel nemeqi ('I will praise the Lord of
Wisdom'), often referred to as 'The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer'.
This had the same basic theme as the Book of Job, that is, it concerned
a man who, for no fault of his own, was apparently deserted by the
divine powers and handed over to the powers of evil.

The proverbs mentioned are sometimes very obscure and (like our own)
often difficult to understand if their application is not known. None
the less there are quite a few which are self-explanatory, the
following among them:

Eat no fat, and you won't excrete blood.

A scorpion stung a man. What did he receive (for it)?

An informer caused a man's death. (By) what did he benefit?

She's pregnant without intercourse, 'tis said;

It's by not eating she has put on weight!

If I am to die, let me eat (my savings);

If I am to live, let me put (money) by.

One of the most interesting pieces of Akkadian literature is of
quite a different kind from any yet mentioned. It is in fact a humorous
composition. This has only been excavated in the last few years, and so
far is unique of its kind in literature written in cuneiform.

The story concerned a man named Gimil-Ninurta, 'poor and lowly',
living in the city of Nippur. He had no silver or gold, and his face
was pinched for want of food and drink. Finally he decided to sell his
clothes and buy a goat. He could have eaten the goat himself, but to
feast alone was a grave social offence, and he still lacked the beer
which guests would expect. Thinking the matter over, he concluded that
the best plan would be to present the goat to the Mayor, on the
principle, no doubt, that once he had gained the Mayor's goodwill he
would profit by his gift many times over. But things did not work out
in that way. The Mayor kept the goat, but then flew into a rage,
accusing, Gimil-Ninurta of attempted bribery, and had him shown to the
door. Gimil-Ninurta was understandably annoyed and, through the
gate-keeper, promised the Mayor to pay him for the insult three times
over. But this seemed an empty threat and, as the text says, 'When the
Mayor heard (this) he laughed all day.'

Gimil-Ninurta went straight off to the King, kissed- the ground
before him, and made his request. He asked that the King should lend
him a chariot for a single day, in return for which he would give a
mina of gold. The King agreed, and Gimil-Ninurta was provided with a
chariot and a robe as though he had been a nobleman. Gimil-Ninurta then
made his way back to the residence of the Mayor of Nippur, taking with
him an empty treasure-chest. The Mayor came out to welcome the supposed
royal messenger, who claimed to be taking gold to the temple for the
King. In the middle of the night Gimil-Ninurta got up, opened his
treasure chest, and set up an outcry that he had been robbed. He set
upon the Mayor so violently that the latter finally gave him two minas
of gold in settlement for that which had supposedly been stolen within
his house. As Gimil-Ninurta a moved off in his chariot he told the
gate-keeper: 'Tell your master, "I have settled one score with you.

Gimil-Ninurta now took himself to have his head shaved and, thus
disguised, returned to the Mayor's residence and made himself out to be
a doctor from the city of Isin. He was admitted, and the Mayor showed
him the bruises he had received from the supposed royal messenger. The
bedside manner of the bogus doctor apparently inspired confidence, and
when he told the Mayor that his cures worked best in darkness the Mayor
took him into a private room. Gimil-Ninurta, who had brought with him,
as part of his supposed medical equipment, a vessel of water and fire
in some form, poured the water over the fire and in the resulting
darkness trussed up the Mayor and beat him up. He then left, remarking
to the gate-keeper as he went that he had settled the second score.

By now, however, the Mayor had put two and two together and realised
that the man who had given him the goat was behind his recent troubles,
and gave orders to all his staff to keep a special watch for the
fellow. Knowing this, Gimil-Ninurta hid himself under a bridge near the
Mayor's residence, and arranged for a man to shout 'Here is the man
with the goat.' The whole of the Mayor's staff went rushing off to
catch 'the man with the goat', leaving the Mayor alone. Gimil-Ninurta
jumped out from his hiding-place, grabbed the Mayor, and gave him his
third beating up. Satisfied that justice had now been done,
Gimil-Ninurta went off to the country, leaving the unfortunate Mayor
more dead than alive.

Chapter V

RUNNING AN EMPIRE

AMONGST all the aspects of ancient Mesopotamian life, there A are
few which have been more widely misunderstood and misrepresented than
the nature of Assyrian imperialism. Few historians or other writers who
touch upon Assyria in the period between 900 B.C. and its final fall
just before 600 B.C. can resist the temptation to gather up their
skirts and add yet another shocked comment upon the barbarism,
brutality and unmatched ruthlessness of the Assyrians. It is rare to
find any attempt to look at Assyrian warfare and imperialism as a whole
in its perspective. Yet, as it is hoped to show below, when one
considers the whole functioning of the Assyrian Empire, and
particularly when one passes judgement in accordance with the
standards, not of our own times but of the other peoples of the ancient
world, a very different picture emerges. The Assyrian Empire was
efficient and would not gladly bear with those who wished to upset the
civilised order, but it was not exceptionally bloody or barbaric. The
number of people killed or mutilated in an average Assyrian campaign in
the interest of efficient administration was, even in proportion to the
population, probably no more than the number of dead and mangled humans
that most Western countries offer annually as a sacrifice to the
motor-car, in the supposed interest of efficient transport.

An account of the general framework of
history in which the Assyrian Empire grew, flourished, and finally
collapsed will be found above (pp. 19-25). This framework can be filled
out considerably with details of the day-to-day activities of the
various officials of the Empire. At most periods there was a very tight
control of affairs by the central government at the capital, so that
the King (or his ministers) required frequent and detailed reports from
provincial officials on all aspects of administration. Nearly 2000 of
the letters which passed between provincial officials and the
authorities at the capital have now been found, and letters such as
these often enable us to fill out the bare outline of events which the
royal annals and similar documents give us.

In trying to obtain a glimpse of the Empire in action, it would be
instructive if we were able to follow up the career of a single typical
official. Unfortunately, there is no single official of whom we have
sufficient details to give us a complete picture of an administrator's
life. On the other hand, there are many officials of whom we know one
or two isolated incidents, and taken together these isolated incidents
make it possible to build up a fairly complete composite picture. Such
a composite picture is attempted below: it must be stressed that what
follows is not offered as the biography of any individual actually
known to us, and to that extent it may be considered imaginary. But
though imaginary, it need not be considered fictitious, since every
significant event mentioned below is actually known to have happened to
some administrator or other.

Our typical official, whom we shall call Qurdi-Ashur-lamur, was born
of an Assyrian father who held land from the King in the district
around the ancient city of Ashur, in former times the capital. The
family had lived there for generations, and each new heir had the
estates granted to him afresh (upon payment of substantial presents) by
the reigning monarch. The members of the family had loyally performed
their part in the royal service, and in the family burial ground there
were regular offerings of food and beer at the tombs of ancestors who
had died fighting for the King.

Qurdi-Ashur-lamur's mother had been the only wife of his father,
monogamy being the normal form of marriage in Assyria at this time. She
was assisted at Qurdi-Ashur-lamur's birth by a midwife, who to ease the
pains mother's labour by practical measures magical rituals, such as
one which told of two good spirits descending from heaven with holy
water and oil. In the rituals the may have been assisted by a priest.
After the necessary I steps and magical hocus-pocus had been completed,
the was admitted to the bedroom, where he held his son, thereby
accepting his legitimacy. The mother suckled her son for the best of
two years; perhaps this was the reason that during that she had no
further children.

As soon as Qurdi-Ashur-lamur was old
enough to toddle about his father he was taught to sit a horse. A
little later he was d to the use of the bow, and thereafter spent much
of his childhood shooting at targets in competition with his friends or
himself in the pursuit of small game(54). At some time the age of ten
he found this freedom disagreeably checked, he was put into the charge
of a prosy old priest or local scribe the rudiments of the cuneiform
script. No one expected master the higher flights of the scribal art,
but it was essential for his future career that he should at least be
able to write and deal with accounts. But formal education alone was by
s the decisive factor in ensuring a successful career, and
Qurdi-Ashur-lamur's father, himself with an honourable record to the
royal family, was careful to keep up his contacts rt. At a favourable
opportunity the father sent off a worthy present and asked for a word
to be dropped in the right quarter: gifts of money made their way to
the right officials, and finally Qurdi-Ashur-lamur received an
appointment as a page at the royal Court.

If Qurdi-Ashur-lamur did not find plenty to interest him at Court,
he must have been either a very dull or a very disagreeable young man.
Though his duties all centred around the King, there was a good deal of
variety in the things he and the other young men like him actually did.
Periodically vassal rulers and their representatives made visits to the
Assyrian King, and on these occasions Qurdi-Ashur-lamur, with some of
the other young men, might be in attendance. Often these were routine
occasions, but sometimes there were excitements, as when a ruler from a
distant land sent presents of unusual creatures, such as an elephant, a
crocodile, or two-humped camels.

Another excitement would be when the victorious Assyrian army
returned from campaign laden with booty. There would be a procession
through the capital to the chief temple, and after the King had
presented his report to the god and made dedications, some of the booty
would be installed within the palace, perhaps fine gold or bronze
vessels from Urartu (Armenia) or carved ivory furniture from Syria. In
the time of Ashurbanipal two obelisks were once brought back from Egypt
to be displayed in the capital.

Inside the palace, it is likely that amongst their other duties the
pages served the King at meals, but their really important task was to
act, as one King put it, as the 'brighteners of the royal mind'.
Exactly how they set about brightening the royal mind we do not know,
but presumably their presence and liveliness served to counteract the
possibly depressing effect of the ponderous Court ritual and the
gravity of the leading religious functionaries and ministers. Certainly
the King must often have needed cheering up, for, to say nothing of the
prosiness which must have been a characteristic of men who had gone
through the full course of the scribal

curriculum, the King was often put to great personal inconvenience.
There were occasions when the priests claimed to have seen menacing
omens, and the King might then be made to fast for several days, or be
obliged to keep away from his womenfolk, or even have to be shaved all
over.

One of the royal religious duties
which, whatever the King may thought of it privately, certainly did not
cause him tedium, was the royal lion hunt. At this event, lions were
released from cages in an enclosed park to be ritually shot down by the
King or even killed by his dagger (56). Needless to say, there were
seasoned bowmen near at hand to prevent any serious mishap to the King,
but this responsibility is not likely to have fallen to green young men
like Qurdi-Ashur-lamur and his companions. They may well have been
among the beaters, or even in a place of safety among the spectators
behind a line of spearsmen. Some of the lions were wild ones straight
from the mountains, whilst others were actually bred from cubs which
had been caught and sent to the capital specially for this purpose.
Lions were not the only animals kept in captivity at the Assyrian
capital: some of the kings had quite a zoo, with such animals as
gazelles, deer, wild asses, leopards, bears, wild oxen, and elephants,
which the people were allowed to see. It is likely, though not certain,
that some of these animals were also released in a park to be shot
down, like the lions.

Alongside such diversions Qurdi-Ashur-lamur's education continued,
though by informal rather than formal means. He might be present to
hear the debates of the King's ministers and the advice given by the
royal astrologers after consulting the omens, and dull and pompous
though such things might appear at the time, they would do much to open
the young man's mind to the wider aspects of both imperial and
religious affairs. Probably it was not consciously recognised, even by
those directly concerned, but the King was governed by the omens, and
the omens were governed by the priests; so that in effect a committee
of the most intelligent, learned, and level-headed men in the kingdom
had the power of veto over any ill-considered plan put forward by the
King.

Further broadening of Qurdi-Ashur-lamur's mind would come from his
day-to-day mixing with the other boys at Court. Of these, some would be
Assyrian like himself, others the sons of foreign vassals who had been
sent to Court as hostages. From the latter a young Assyrian might
acquire a smattering of some of the foreign languages of the Empire,
and afterwards, if he found himself interested enough to wish to go
further, he could receive more formal instruction by making friends
with one of the interpreters at Court.

By the time Qurdi-Ashur-lamur was in
his late teens, he might be permitted to accompany the King as he went
on campaign, either running by his chariot together with other young
men of the same status, or perhaps serving as a cavalryman. He would
now have his first sight of warfare. The army would make its advance,
as described later in this chapter, into territory unfamiliar to
Qurdi-Ashur-lamur, until it reached a valley from which, perhaps, there
had come reports that all was not well. In the valley the local ruler
would come hurrying with his courtiers and sons to bow low before the
King, offering gifts as a token of loyalty. The ruler would be given a
feast and confirmed in his little princedom by his Assyrian overlord,
and his ministers would tell the Assyrian King what they knew of
developments among their neighbours. They might mention particularly a
series of troublesome raids from the mountain folk, who had recently
been receiving with considerable enthusiasm a mission from Urartu, the
powerful kingdom in Armenia. At the same time the vassal prince would
perhaps also introduce his heir, in the hope of receiving the promise
of the Assyrian King to support him as the lawful successor if treason
or external attack brought about the death of the vassal prince
himself.

It would be usual in the circumstances
imagined for a contingent of the army to be sent to the mountains to
investigate the complaint of anti-Assyrian activity, and
Qurdi-Ashur-lamur might accompany the soldiers. As the troops reached
the first of the mountain villages they would be likely to find it
deserted except for a few old men and women incapable of leaving, a
clear indication that there was some justification for the charges
against the hillsmen. High above them, the Assyrians would see
inhabitants of all the lower villages, carrying bundles of their
household possessions, clambering with the agility of goats to the
almost inaccessible caves near the peaks. A unit of Assyrian
mountaineers would be sent off in pursuit, in the hope of catching the
local chieftain, but he would have a good start and all the advantages
of local knowledge. In the villages little that was portable would have
been left behind, so little would remain for the troops to loot. But in
a hut here and there fire might still be burning on the hearth, and the
soldiers, making torches of brushwood, would apply them to everything
combustible, and soon all the huts of the low-lying villages would be
ablaze. The hillsmen would be too busy rebuilding their villages to
give further trouble with raids on the valley people for a year or two.

The whole campaign might well consist of repeated incidents of this
kind, extending over a period of two months or more, since major
engagements against foreign armies comparable to the Assyrian army were
exceptions rather than 58 Carrying the chariot of Sargon 11 of Assyria
the rule. Throughout the campaign Qurdi-Ashur-lamur would generally
remain close to the King, acting as a bodyguard in times of danger, as
an attendant on formal occasions in camp, and even as a porter when in
mountainous territory it was necessary to lift the royal chariot over
boulders (58).

Having seen something of active
service, the next year Qurdi-Ashur-lamur might be appointed a junior
officer over a cavalry unit with a force sent to reinforce the northern
frontier. The immediate reason for such a troop movement would probably
be intelligence reports of the mustering of Urartian forces in that
area. As a result of minor skirmishing, one or two key mountain
villages held by Urartu were perhaps taken, and the Urartian forces
dislodged from the area in which they menaced Assyrian security.
Subsequently, as winter approached and campaigning became impossible,
the main Assyrian force would return to its base, though a few Assyrian
officers, of whom we may suppose Qurdi-Ashur-lamur was one, would
remain to preserve the status quo on border and to report on any
development. During the bitter weather of winter Qurdi-Ashur-lamur
might find the population of his villages gradually increasing as some
of the original inhabitant who had fled at the Assyrian approach and
had since been living out on the mountains, had either to return to
their homes and make submission to the Assyrian authorities or stay out
on the mountains and probably die of exposure. These peasants would be
allowed to go about their business, often proving useful to
Qurdi-Ashur-lamur in being the means of bringing intelligence reports
about Urartian activities on the other side of the mountain. Such
reports would be duly passed back to the capital for evaluation. If
they suggested that the Urartians were preparing for a new attack in
the spring, a more powerful Assyrian force would be sent to hold the
area, freeing Qurdi-Ashur-lamur to return to the capital in time for
the New Year Festival in late March (pp. 110-111).

We may imagine, shortly after this, a dispatch rider galloping into
the capital with the news that the whole of one sector of the northern
frontier was in revolt, the native chieftain who had previously taken
an oath of allegiance to Assyria having thrown in his lot with the
enemy. The kind of situation which might have occurred was that the
chieftain had secretly accepted emissaries from the King of Urartu, who
had convinced him that the Urartian forces would shortly drive the
Assyrians from the whole area, and had won him over with the promise of
exemption from taxation in the future, if he assisted Urartu now. Thus
persuaded, the chieftain had led his native levies in a surprise attack
upon the local Assyrian son. But the Urartian intelligence and
communication system was inferior to that of the Assyrians, and if the
situation we are imagining followed the usual course the expected
Urartian attack might well not have begun until the local revolt had
been put down and the rebel leader captured, betrayed by some of his
own people to obtain the large reward of gold offered by the Assyrian
commander. The unfortunate chieftain would be flayed alive and his skin
nailed up prominently on the Mountainside as a warning, and some
villages which had been active in the revolt burned to the ground. When
the expected Urartian attack did come it would be too late, and with
the help of contingents sent in by the Assyrian commanders on other
sectors of the front, and reinforcements from
the homeland, including perhaps Qurdi-Ashur-lamur with his cavalry, it
would be easily repulsed.

The revolt and execution of the local native vassal would pose
administrative problems to the King and his advisers in the capital. It
is likely that the possibility would be considered of appointing a son
or brother of the previous chieftain, but, supposing this was not the
first occasion upon which the area had given trouble, it would probably
be decided, particularly as the area was militarily of some importance,
that the time had come to introduce direct rule. The area we are
imagining, a group of perhaps a score of villages in an enclave in the
mountains, would not be a major appointment, and for general
administrative purposes it could be added to the province of a governor
with his seat at a major city some thirty miles away. The immediate
day-to-day problems of administration and government would, however,
make it desirable to have an Assyrian official on the spot. He would be
able to keep a watch for any further signs of disloyalty to Assyria,
maintain security in the area generally, and, perhaps most important of
all, collect and pass on intelligence reports. Much of the military and
administrative efficiency of the Assyrian Empire rested ultimately upon
an efficient system of communications and intelligence. An Assyrian
King, gratefully acknowledging an intelligence report of tribal
movements in Babylonia, says: 'The man who loves the house of his
lords, opens the ears of his lords to whatever he sees or hears. It is
good that you have sent a message and opened my ears.'

We will suppose that for the appointment in question the name of
Qurdi-Ashur-lamur was suggested. it was acceptable to the King, but it
was also necessary that it should receive the approval of the gods. On
a propitious day, therefore, a ceremony was performed in which the will
of the Sun-god in the matter was ascertained. A tablet was inscribed,
bearing the name of Qurdi-Ashur-lamur, together with the question, 'As
to the man whose name is inscribed here, shall he be appointed to
such-and-such an appointment?'. This was placed before the symbol of
the Sun-god, whilst the divination priests carefully selected a lamb
without blemish. This they slaughtered, and having torn out its liver
and lungs, by cross-reference to clay models of these organs(36) they
made an inventory of favourable and unfavourable signs. The first count
gave a clear majority for 'yes!', though had the result been
unfavourable there would have been the possibility of taking a second
or even a third set of readings.

As rab alani (Chief of the Towns) of his area,
Qurdi-Ashur-lamur would be in constant touch by messenger not only with
his provincial governor but also with the capital. There would be a
track leading to the city of the provincial governor, whilst between
the governor's city and the plains there were permanent posts where
mules were always kept in readiness for messengers carrying dispatches
to or from the capital. From the edge of the lowlands road led direct
to the capital.

Qurdi-Ashur-lamur would be responsible not only for the military and
political security of his area, but also for the collection f taxes,
which were mainly in kind. For assistance he would have staff which
included a scribe serving as Tax Inspector, recording ownership or
tenancy of land, noting the state of the rainfall and ether a good or a
poor harvest was to be expected, and assessing each farmer's land for
the amount of grain due as tax. When the taxes had been assessed and
collected, transport still had to be arranged to move the produce to
the provincial capital, where it was either stored for use by the army
when on operations in that region, or transmitted to the central cities
of Assyria. Each village n the area was also responsible for producing
every year a certain number of cattle, sheep, and horses, which were
sent in large herds to Assyria. Some of the young men probably went
with the horses, since the area in which we have imagined
Qurdi-Ashur-lamur had a reputation for producing skilled horsemen, and
these wild mountaineers would find, not unwillingly, an outlet for
their fighting spirit in cavalry contingents in the service of the
Assyrian King.

These tax deliveries, like taxes
always, were a source of irritation to the natives, and unskilful
administration or the propaganda of agents of Urartu from over the
border might on occasions lead the local people either to run away into
the mountains or to engage in active rebellion. But firm direct
Assyrian administration was not all loss. Taxation was an inevitable
evil, and whether the villagers were ruled by people of their own or
another race made little difference in this respect: if anything,
Assyrian taxation probably bore less heavily, since the central
administration kept a firm hand on its provincial officials, who were
thereby much less likely to be able to extort sums for their own pocket
above those required by the Government. Moreover the area had much
greater security under Assyrian rule, as Qurdi-Ashur-lamur would be
expected the central government to take stern measures against any
empts by the inhabitants of one mountain village to raid another. If
the harvest failed altogether, as it well might in a mountainous area,
Qurdi-Ashur-lamur would call upon the provincial vital for an issue of
the grain stored there. Probably the villagers to repay the grain with
heavy interest when next they had a d harvest, but meanwhile they were
not faced with the sight their children dying from famine, as had been
the situation in earlier years. Qurdi-Ashur-lamur also attempted to
safeguard the harvests by damming some of the local mountain streams
and introducing a system of irrigation. However, though this now became
possible as a result of the security given by Assyrian administration,
the idea was not new to the. area, and in some of the more settled
mountainous areas over the border the Urartian authorities were
undertaking similar measures.

It frequently happened that when a stable situation had been secured
on Assyria's north-eastern frontier, trouble would break out in the
western part of the Empire, over by the Mediterranean coast. We may
imagine such a situation at this time. In consequence of this a general
mobilisation would be proclaimed, Qurdi-Ashur-lamur, like many other
officers in his position, being required to leave his area in the
charge of a subordinate, with a limited holding force, and to proceed
with his own squadron of cavalry, and as many native levies as he could
raise, to the capital without delay. There he would find assembled a
great army, of something like 200,000 men, prepared to move off for
action in Syria.

The Assyrian army would duly carry out
its operations, and crush the trouble in Syria. Since an account of an
actual engagement of the Assyrian army is given later in this chapter,
no more details are necessary here. At the conclusion of the operation,
as a safeguard against further trouble, the Assyrian authorities would
take away from some of the most troublesome cities their leading
citizens and craftsmen and their families, settling them in other parts
of the Empire and filling their places in the Syrian cities with
corresponding groups from elsewhere (62-3). This policy of
transportation was widely used in the Assyrian Empire to deal with
troublesome ethnic groups, and has, of course, been employed in the
same way in the Soviet Union since the Second World War.

In the major towns of the subdued area the Assyrian authorities
would leave administrators, supported by substantial forces, to control
local policy. Amongst these administrators we may imagine
Qurdi-Ashur-lamur, installed in a town at the foot of the Lebanon
range. The local way of life was based, and had been for well over a
thousand years, upon felling the cedars in the mountains and pre paring
the lumber for sending either by ship to Egypt or overland and by river
to Assyria and Babylonia. The lumber destined for Egypt was brought
down to the wharves ready for loading, as it had, always been but now
Qurdi-Ashur-lamur ordered his Tax Inspector to go along to make the
necessary assessments for a tax upon this trade.' This proved a highly
unpopular move with the natives. It was so unpopular that, despite the
armed escort accompanying the Tax Inspector, a mob caught him and
killed him. This was a dangerous precedent, and Qurdi-Ashur-lamur took
immediate action. He sent a message to the nearest garrison for a
contingent of troops from a certain tribe, which were often used for
police duties in cities. These came into the town and proceeded to
knock a little law and order into the rioters. Qurdi-Ashur-lamur then
issued a decree that in future all trade with Egypt would be
controlled, and that the lumber could only be dispatched under the
supervision of the Assyrian authorities.

It is hoped that enough has been said
to give some idea of how the imperial administration of Assyria worked.
As to Qurdi-Ashur-lamur himself, if he had made a good impression in
his early administrative posts he might subsequently rise to a
provincial governorship. Of these there were about thirty senior posts,
and a varying number of nominal governorships which were not of
sufficient importance to entitle the holder to the supreme privilege of
officiating at the New Year Festival.

Very little has been said about Qurdi-Ashur-lamur's personal life.
Some royal officials amongst the Assyrians were eunuchs, but assuming
that Quardi-Ashur-lamur escaped this fate he probably married in his
early teens, the marriage arrangements being made between his parents
and the parents of the bride. The girl would probably live in his
father's household, where he would visit her on his absences from
Court, until he was sufficiently senior to set up a household of his
own or until his father died and he himself was granted the estate by
the King. In the course of his war service Qurdi-Ashur-lamur would be
likely from time to time to find among native captives a young lady who
took his eye, and there was nothing to prevent him from taking her home
as a concubine for himself and a slave-girl for his wife.

ASSYRIAN WARFARE

Assyria, it is sometimes said, was a State organised primarily for
war. This is not the whole truth, but certainly warfare is one of the
aspects of Assyrian life upon which we are best informed, particularly
during the century of the Sargonid period (722-626B.C.).

At this period it seems to have been a religious duty for the King
to undertake at least a nominal campaign almost every year. By no means
every campaign called out the whole potential military might of the
Assyrian Empire; often campaigns were little more than demonstrations
against possible troublemakers, or even mere training manoeuvres, and
these could be adequately dealt with by the standing army.

The primary reason for the existence of a standing army in Assyria
was to safeguard the King against rebellion by his own provincial
governors, who might become very powerful men indeed. Within the
standing army there were special units who served specifically as
bodyguards to the King; these are often described by the King as 'the
troops who in a place hostile or friendly never leave my feet'. There
were other special permanent units not attached directly to the King,
but scattered about the Empire under military officers, and available
-for immediate action at any trouble point. Some of these were cavalry
squadrons of a hundred cavalrymen, like those we have imagined attached
to Quardi-Ashur-lamur in his first appointment; others were permanent
garrisons in border outposts. Such troops need not have been native
Assyrians (and indeed in some cases it can be proved that they were
not), but their loyalty to Assyria, and their courage, were probably as
unquestionable as the loyalty and courage of the Gurkhas and Sikhs in
the forces of British India before 1947.

In times of national emergency the standing army was reinforced by
troops raised by provincial governors throughout the Empire. These
provincial forces were largely local levies. We may refer to the whole
army so constituted as the grand army. There is a good deal of
difference of opinion as to the numbers concerned in ancient armies,
but the facts seem to indicate that this grand army might run into
hundreds of thousands. The kind of evidence upon which this conclusion
is based is that in one major action against Elam, enemy casualties are
given as 150,000, and in other cases prisoners are numbered in hundreds
of thousands.

In many parts of the ancient world military campaigning was a
seasonal activity, taking place quite regularly, almost as a summer
vacation, between the end of harvest and the resumption of agricultural
operations in early winter. In the Bible, for instance, in connection
with King David, a season is actually identified as 'the time when
kings go forth to battle' (2 Samuel xi 1). At one time this
must have been the situation in Assyria also, but this was no longer
the case in the Sargonid period. At that period the army might be on
campaign at any time of the year, and there was always a striking force
ready for immediate action.

The Assyrian army, like every other,
marched on its stomach, and part of the credit for its undoubted
efficiency must go to the Commissariat. Normally the army took with it
basic rations of corn and oil for the troops, and, in areas of
operation (such as South Babylonia) where there was likely to be no
good grazing, straw or hay for the horses. Corn must have been provided
for the horses in any case, since the effectiveness of the cavalry and
chariotry depended upon keeping the horses in top condition. Normally
the supplies for the troops were distributed as daily rations, but
occasionally when the capture of an enemy granary town produced a
temporary glut the King could allow the troops to help themselves. When
the army passed through an Assyrian province it was the responsibility
of the local Assyrian governor to provide for the feeding of the army,
and of course elsewhere the army would live off the country as far as
possible.

The Assyrian army in its formal order of march must have presented
an imposing sight. First came the standards of the gods, apparently
wooden or metal symbols on poles, accompanied by the diviners and other
religious functionaries. Then came the King in a chariot, surrounded by
a bodyguard of young noblemen on foot, and a force of cavalry. On both
wings were forces of light infantry, ready to fan out as scouts or
snipers if the nature of the country so required. Also attached to the
force centred on the King were his staff, officers, as well as
intelligence officers, interpreters and scribes.

Behind this force came the main army, composed principally of tribal
levies, each levy under the command of a provincial governor or one of
his staff. The equipment of these levies varied according to the region
from which they came, some being stingers, others archers, others
cavalrymen, all in their distinctive national dress.

Following the levies came the transport, presumably accompanied and
controlled by the engineers. The tasks which confronted the engineers
were varied: their duties included the building of bridges across
streams, or alternatively the provision of ferry boats(65), the cutting
of roads through mountains, the destruction of enemy fortifications,
and the building of ramps for use in siege warfare. These ramps
consisted of frames of timber with a filling of earth and stones, and
their main purpose was to enable battering-rams to be brought into
operation against the higher and weaker section of city walls. The
battering-rams mentioned are amongst the instruments of war most
commonly seen on Assyrian bas-reliefs (61, 66). Basically they
consisted of a metal (or metalclad) pole at the front of an armoured
wheeled vehicle. The armoured vehicle gave protection to several men
inside who provided the motive power and worked the ram, which in at
least some designs of the machine was suspended by chains and could be
swung back and forth to increase its momentum and to give a non-stop
pounding on the walls. Such machines, together with the other war
equipment and the sacks of grain as rations, must have required a
considerable body of transport, in the form of wagons and pack-asses,
bringing up the rear.

It should be noticed that,
contrary to what one might suppose from the writings of some modern
authors, Assyrian military campaigns were not a mere succession of
massacres and tortures. In general, a newly conquered city or State was
not harshly treated, and in many cases its native ruler was left in
charge as a vassal, subject to the payment of tribute, the maintenance
of a friendly attitude to Assyria, and the installation of an Assyrian
representative at the Court. Such a ruler was often made to enter into
a formal treaty with Assyria, and Assyrian kings went into considerable
administrative detail in such treaties with their vassals, as to what
they might or might not do. Thus in a treaty with the King of Tyre,
Esarhaddon says: 'You shall not open a letter that I send you without
the Qipu-official [the Assyrian representative]. If the Qipu-official
is not at hand, you shall await him (and then) open (it).' It was only
when such a vassal broke his oath of allegiance that he and his country
were likely to be treated with severity; but even in such cases it was
only the leaders of the city or State who were likely to be tortured or
mutilated. Death or mutilation was not the invariable fate awaiting
those who had rebelled against Assyria. Of one city Esarhaddon relates:
'I cast their king Asukhili into fetters and brought (him) to Assyria.
I made him sit tied up near the gate of the inner city of Nineveh with
a bear, a dog, and a pig.' Generally the worst that was likely to
happen to the mass of the people, and then only when they had
repeatedly shown themselves troublesome, was that they were deported to
another part of the Assyrian Empire, as in the well-known instance of
the Israelites at the capture of Samaria. Of course, it may be said
that the Assyrians were blameworthy for the mere fact of being
imperialists, but imperialism is not necessarily wrong: there are
circumstances in which it may be both morally right and necessary. Such
was the case in the Near East in the early first millennium. But for
the Assyrian Empire the whole of the achievements of the previous 2000
years of civilization might have been lost in anarchy, as a host of
tiny kingdoms (like Israel, Judah, and Moab) played at war amongst
themselves, or it might have been swamped under hordes of the savage
peoples who were constantly attempting to push southwards from beyond
the Caucasus.

It may be of some interest to give such details as we have of one
particular Assyrian engagement. The example chosen was not a punitive
expedition against troublesome vassals, but an attack upon a dangerous
coalition headed by Assyria's northern neighhour Urartu (in the region
later known as Armenia).

In the summer of 714 B.C. King Sargon set off to the region east and
north of Assyria with the object (as he put it) of 'muzzling the mouth
of the insolent, binding the halter upon the over-bold'. In plain
language, he intended to deal with the threat that the two growing
kingdoms of Zikirtu (an Iranian people) and Urartu (a people related at
some distance to the Hurrians) constituted to Assyria's security and
its control of the trade routes running from Iran and beyond to the
west. After certain minor operations amongst his vassals and
tributaries in the eastern mountains, Sargon made contact with the King
of Zikirtu, who withdrew his main force to link up with the King of
Urartu, leaving small forces in mountain outposts to harass Sargon in
his pursuit. The terrain was difficult, and by the time Sargon had
reached the area held by Ursa, King of Urartu, his forces were in bad
morale, and he no longer had full tactical control of his whole army.
He frankly says:

I could not give ease to their weariness, I could not give them
water to drink, I could not set up the camp and I could not fix the
defence of the headquarters. I could not direct my advance-guards (with
the result that) I could not gather them in to me; my units of the
right and left had not returned to my side; and I could not await the
rear-guard.

Ursa of Urartu and Metatti of Zikirtu
drew up their battle line in a defile of the mountain in difficult
terrain and awaited the coming of Sargon. No doubt they had foreseen
that the nature of the country would cause Sargon difficulty in
maintaining tactical control over the whole of his forces. Actually,
although the place in question, a defile in the mountain, doubtless
seemed to Ursa an excellent place in which to catch and mop up the
Assyrian army, it was in fact an extremely grave tactical error on his
part to engage his whole army in a defensive battle in such
circumstances. The great German strategist and tactician von Clausewitz
goes to great length in his book On War to point out that though small
bodies of troops may offer powerful resistance in mountainous country,
it is tactical folly to commit a whole army to a defensive action in
such territory.

Sargon appears to have recognised that Ursa's tactical error had
placed a major victory within his grasp, in circumstances which fully
outweighed his own breakdown of communications. Therefore, although
most of his army was not immediately available for action, he made an
attack at once. His attack was headed by his personal squadron of
cavalry, although Sargon himself, presumably for ceremonial reasons,
was in a light chariot. The cavalry, consisting
of mounted archers and lancers, cut straight into the centre of the
opposing forces, shooting down the enemy chariot horses, and making
straight for Ursa's headquarters. The faulty tactics of Ursa had
deprived his chariotry of the possibility of manoeuvre, and the cavalry
onslaught caused havoc. Most of Ursa's staff officers and cavalry were
compelled to surrender, though Ursa himself managed to slip away on a
mare, to the derision of the Assyrians, who held that if a King rode a
horse at all it should be a stallion. The surrender of the Urartian
cavalry underlines the bad generalship of Ursa. Sargon specifically
says that the Urartian army had the best-trained horses in the world.
His actual statement, with reference to a particular region of Urartu,
goes as follows:

As to the people who live in that area in the land of Urartu, . . .
their like does not exist for skill with cavalry horses. The foals,
young steeds born in the King's spacious land, which they rear for his
royal contingents and catch yearly, until they are taken to the land of
Subi and their quality becomes apparent, will never have had anyone
straddling their backs; yet in advancing, wheeling, retreating, or
battle disposition, they are never seen to break out of control.

With the Urartian army completely demoralised and defeated, Sargon
now turned to Zikirtu. Here there was a different formation and this
required different tactics. The forces of Zikirtu were organised not as
a national army but on a tribal or territorial basis. Sargon's tactics
here were to break up the battle formation by separating the
tributaries from their overlord (the King of Zikirtu) and then to smash
up the disorganised units.

The defeat of the Zikirtian and
Urartian armies need not have meant the final defeat of Urartu, for, as
von Clausewitz points out, at such a stage the conqueror is now at the
same disadvantage at which the defender stood before. If the defenders
take up arms in a determined guerilla action in the mountains, the
attacker can still be defeated.

Here, however, the psychological aspects of Assyrian warfare had
their effect. Sargon was deep in hostile territory and might well have
been exposed to crippling guerilla warfare. That he was not was in part
the consequence of his own use of propaganda. The Assyrian kings
frequently mention that they poured out terror upon the enemy land, and
this represented not--as has often been suggested--an act of sadism,
but the employment of terrorism for the purposes of psychological
warfare. In the absence of mass media of communications, the only means
of softening up an enemy population in advance of the army was by the
use of terror, spreading from village to village and town to town with
reports of the ferocity of the Assyrian forces. It was this kind of
thing which protected the Assyrian army from guerilla warfare after its
victory over the main armies of Urartu and Zikirtu. Sargon specifically
mentions that after he had inflicted that defeat, 'the rest of the
people, who had fled to save their lives, I let go free to glorify the
victory of the god Ashur my lord'. Some of these poor wretches died
from exposure in the mountains, but others reached home, where their
terrifying account of the devastating striking power of the Assyrian
forces had the required effect. Sargon goes on to record: 'Their
leaders, men who understood battle and who had fled before my weapons,
drew near to them covered with the venom of death, and recounted to
them the glory of Ashur, . . . so that they became like dead men.' The
methods of Assyrian psychological warfare may be distasteful to us in
modern times, but one need go no further than this comment of Sargon to
see that it had a high military value, and did not spring from some
sadistic element peculiar to the Assyrian character.

Chapter VI

ANCIENT CRAFTS AND INDUSTRIES

IN the third century B.C., when Babylonian civilisation was, except
for a few priests and astronomers, virtually dead, a Babylonian priest
named Berossus wrote an account of the traditions of his people. This
account, written not in Sumerian or Akkadian but in Greek, included a
description of the supposed origin of civilisation. According to
Berossus,

In the first year [of the world] there appeared, from the Persian
Gulf, a being named Oannes. His whole body was that of a fish. Under
the fish's head he had another head, and joined to the fish's tail were
feet like those of a man.... This being used to pass the day among men,
and gave them knowledge of written documents and all kinds of knowledge
and crafts. He taught them to construct cities, to found temples, to
compile laws, and to survey the land; and made known to ring of fruit.
In short, he instructed them the use of seeds and the gathered them in
everything necessary for daily life. From that time nothing further has
been discovered.

Two thousand years before this there had been a Sumerian myth in
circulation, describing how the Water-god Enki (also the god of Wisdom)
had created the world order. This god had created the sheepfolds,
instituted cattle rearing, and given to the world such things as
irrigation, fishing, ploughing and cultivation, the use of grain,
brick-making and metal-working, and women's crafts such as spinning and
weaving.

Despite the gap of two millennia, the
underlying idea is clearly the same. It was recognised that
civilisation was in the first place based upon certain early
developments in man's mastery of his environment and available
materials, of such a fundamental nature that they could be considered
the revelation of a go . . more bluntly, the people of Babylonia, from
first to last, took the view (whether rightly or wrongly) that what lay
at the basis of civilisation was not simply spiritual values, but
included a considerable measure of what we might now call technology.

We notice that Berossus, looking back from a period when Babylonian
civilisation had only a past and no future, believed that since the
original revelation by Oannes nothing further had been discovered. His
predecessors of 2000 years before had known better.

The more ancient myth concerning Enki and the world order seems
primarily to describe the

state of human achievement at the time of the coming of the
Sumerians into Mesopotamia. The Sumerians did not of course suddenly
appear and create civilisation out of nothing, and many cultural
advances had taken place in the Near East (not necessarily in
Mesopotamia) before the Sumerians ever arrived on the scene. Most of
these early advances in the Near East were of a kind as fundamental to
our own civilisation as to the Sumerian way of life. Our principal food
animals, the sheep and the ox, were domesticated there, and barley and
wheat were first cultivated in the same area. It was in some part of
the Near Fast, possibly Mesopotamia itself, that large-scale irrigation
and the use of the ox-drawn plough first began. Pottery and metal
technology both had their origin not far from Mesopotamia. Spinning and
weaving, widely known in prehistoric times, were also crafts practised
in pre-Sumerian Mesopotamia. Though all these developments were known
before the coming of the Sumerians, it was the Sumerians who were the
first people to be acquainted with all of them at once. Ever afterwards
life was unthinkable for them (as indeed it would be for us) without
these material foundations. It was all these achievements, existing
before the Sumerians reached Mesopotamia, which they thought of as the
basis of the world order established by Enki.

The earliest Sumerians did not,
however, passively accept the world order as unchangeable in all its
details, and they added their own inventions and discoveries to the
prehistoric legacy which had come down to them. Some such technological
advances we have to infer from archaeological sources, though one or
two are reflected in Sumerian myths. There is, for example, a myth
referring to the beginning of shade-tree gardening, that is, the
planting of trees to give vegetables some protection against the
scorching sun of 72 Copper lion's head, c. 2900 B.C. Mesopotamia and to
reduce soil erosion.

We know something of the details of Sumerian agriculture in the
third millennium B.C. from an ancient Sumerian text, one of many which
have been pieced together by the noted Sumerologist S. N. Kramer of
Philadelphia. The text gives instructions in the form of advice from a
father to a son. The following account is based on Professor Kramer's
latest discussion and translation of the composition in his book The
Sumerians (Chicago, 1963).

When a man started work in his field, he had first to irrigate it,
but must ensure that the water did not rise too high. After the water
had been run off, oxen, wearing some kind of shoe, were driven over the
field to tread down the weeds. These oxen, trampling about in the mud,
would leave the surface very uneven, and it therefore needed to be
worked over and levelled by men with mattocks, and afterwards by a
drag, presumably some kind of harrow.

The field next had to be ploughed,
with two different types of plough, and then harrowed and raked.
Finally any clods that still remained were broken up with hammers. All
this obviously required a substantial labour force and hard work all
round, and the farmer in our text is advised to keep a constant watch
on his men. This part of the operation was expected to occupy a full
ten days, continuing by starlight as well as during the daytime.

The field was now ready for sowing. This was done by means of a
seeder plough, an implement with a vertical funnel above the
ploughshare, so arranged that seed could be dropped straight into the
bottom of the furrow (37). A man with a bag of barley walked alongside
this plough and was expected to drop the seed in at a uniform rate and
to make sure that it went to a depth of about an inch and a half. When
the sowing had been done, the field was once again levelled and any
remaining clods broken up.

As soon as the barley began to sprout, the farmer had to say a
prayer to the goddess of Vermin, and to take his own measures by
scaring off the birds. Amongst the worst of the ancient farmer's
possible troubles at this stage, though the Sumerian text does not
mention them, were locust swarms. As the crop grew, it had to be
irrigated three times, at stages which are carefully defined in terms
of the height of the barley. The third irrigation was when the barley
was at its full height. This was a time of some anxiety, and the farmer
had to keep a careful watch for any sign of the fungus disease we
generally call 'rust', which is marked by a reddening of the affected
plant. If the farmer got past this danger successfully, he could now
give a fourth irrigation, which, it was estimated, would increase the
final yield by ten per cent.

There were equally detailed instructions for the harvesting. This
was to be done as soon as the barley was fully ripe: it was not to be
left until some of it started to droop. The harvesting team consisted
of three men. There was a reaper, a second man to bind the sheaves, and
a third man to set up the sheaves in stooks. Gleaners were allowed in
the field to pick up fallen ears of barley, but were not, of course,
allowed to interfere with the sheaves.

The threshing and winnowing now followed, taking place at a special
threshing floor. According to Professor Kramer the threshing was in two
stages, mounds of barley first being run over by wagons for five days
and the grain then extracted from the ears by the use of a special
threshing sledge. But there would seem to be no obvious point in the
first part of the operation. It is therefore suggested that this part
of the text simply means that wagon loads of barley were standing by,
and would be driven up to be unloaded on the threshing floor as soon as
required.

In any case, it is quite clear that the actual threshing was done
with a threshing sledge. This consisted of a wooden frame with teeth of
stones or metal bedded into bitumen underneath and secured with leather
thongs. Oxen dragged this instrument round and round over the ears of
corn, with the driver sitting on the sledge to increase the pressure.
The same method of threshing could still be seen in use around
Jerusalem as recently as 1947.

The final operation, the winnowing, was carried out by two men
described as 'barley-lifters'. The method of separation was apparently
to throw the mixture of grain, chaff and dust into the air when a
strong wind was blowing. The light rubbish would be carried away,
leaving a heap of clean grain.

In the text summarised above the reference was throughout to barley.
It has been mentioned that wheat was known in Mesopotamia in
pre-Sumerian times, and throughout Mesopotamian history it has usually
been grown to some extent. However, it was always grown less than
barley, and in third-millennium Sumer, as the botanist Hans Helbaek has
pointed out, barley seems to have been grown almost to the exclusion of
wheat from about 2700 B.C. This was probably a consequence of
irrigation. Helbaek points out that repeated irrigation gradually
increases the salinity of the soil, and since wheat is less tolerant of
salinity than barley, the land would become unusable for wheat sooner
than for barley. Ultimately the barley crops would also fail, and this
may explain why some of the early Sumerian settlements ceased to be
inhabited.

The third important crop in ancient Mesopotamia was sesame grown as
a source of oil: the name of this plant in both Sumerian and Akkadian
means 'oil plant'. Amongst other agricultural products were, as
mentioned elsewhere, dates and various vegetables.

Animal husbandry was also of considerable importance in the economy
of the Sumerians from earliest times. Both oxen and small cattle (that
is, sheep and goats) were bred from the beginning of the historical
period, but the small cattle were always by far the more numerous, many
different breeds being known. From the period of the Third Dynasty of
Ur (around 2100 B.C.) we have records of flocks of sheep running into
tens of thousands. It has been shown that at this time male sheep were
castrated on a considerable scale, though the practice largely went out
of use in the succeeding Old Babylonian period.

The sheep and goats were, of course,
valuable not only as a source of food and as sacrificial animals for
the temples (74), but also for their wool and hair. The original way of
collecting sheep's wool was to pluck it, a method which shearing had
not wholly superseded by 1400 B. C.

Professor Th. Jacobsen of Harvard has given an interesting account
of the textile industry just before 2000 B.C., his evidence coming from
an archive found near the temple of Nanna at Ur. This archive dealt
with the economic interests of the King, in particular those related to
the wool and textile industry.

The herdsmen in charge of the royal flocks paid their wool into the
central depot, where there were separate stores for the wool from
fat-tailed sheep, from flocks of other breeds, and also for hair from
goats. At the end of each year all stocks were taken out into the open
for stock-taking, and incidentally, one may suppose, for an airing.

Issues of wool were made from time to time. Some of these were for
cult purposes (for equipment for the gods, and so on), whilst other
issues were made to male and female slaves and other workers in the
service of the King. The figures for these issues have permitted the
incidental calculation that at this time the number of slaves in the
service of the King was about 9000.

The wool went out from the stores to be spun and woven in the
villages and towns around Ur. Spinning and weaving were origin. a
predominantly female occupations, and were still so at this time. The
cloth produced by the weavers then went to fullers who treated it in an
alkaline solution made from the ashes of a particular plant. The wool
might then be dyed with various dyes of vegetable origin, or, in the
case of the most valuable cloth, with the famous purple from shell-fish
collected on the coast of Syria.

The woollen cloth produced covered a wide range of quality, from
that fit for a King to that only suitable for a slave. In addition to
woollen cloth, linen was also produced, though on a smaller scale, and
flax (the raw material for linen) is mentioned in the archive we have
referred to.

Another material extensively used in the ancient-as in the
modern-world, was leather, and there is frequent mention of
leather-workers. Needless to say, the usual source was the hides of
cows or oxen and the skins of sheep and goats. Pig skins were also
used. The skins were tanned by steeping them in a solution of alum
together with an infusion made from gall-nuts (oak-apples); both alum
and gall-nuts had to be imported from the north and at all times were
important items of commerce. Amongst the things for which leather was
used were items of clothing, shoes and sandals, shields and helmets,
horse harness, slings, the tyres of chariots, coverings for chairs and
chariots, bags and various kinds of container, skins for holding
liquids, and membranes for drums.

One of the most important aspects of ancient Mesopotamian industry
was its metal technology, though Mesopotamia played no part in the
earliest stage of metal utilisation.

Copper ores are of widespread occurrence in the mountains north of
Mesopotamia, from Anatolia to the Caspian Sea, and the archaeological
evidence indicates that it was somewhere in this region, most probably
in Iran just after 4000 B.C., that true copper technology began. By
'true copper technology' we mean first the melting and casting of
copper occurring as a pure metal and then the smelting of copper ores.
The details of these developments go well outside the period and area
with which this book deals, but it may be mentioned that the old theory
that copper was first smelted from its ores accidentally over a camp
fire is now generally discounted, as the necessary temperature would
scarcely be achieved. It is more probable that the process of smelting
copper ores was first discovered in furnaces of the type used for
making pottery. In such furnaces, used in northern Mesopotamia and Iran
by 4000 B.C., temperatures of up to 1200'C could be achieved, and this
was easily sufficient not only to smelt copper from its ores (requiring
a temperature of 700'-800'C) but also to melt the pure metal (melting
point 1085'C). Metallic copper often occurs naturally in association
with its ores, which are in the form of blue stones, and an early
metallurgist might well put a mixed lump of this kind into a furnace
with the object of melting the copper away from the stone. If the man
found that he ended with much more copper than he had started with, and
that most of the stone had disappeared, he would rightly conclude that
he could 'cook' copper out of that sort of blue stone. This may well
have been the way in which the process of copper smelting was
discovered.

The smelting of copper certainly did not begin in Mesopotamia, but
the use of the metal (extremely limited at first) soon spread into the
area. By about 2900 B.C. it was in relatively common use, being
employed for such things as vases, bowls, mirrors, cosmetic pots,
fish-hooks, chisels, daggers, hoes and axes (75).

It was shortly after this time that,
so far as Mesopotamia is concerned, the general use of bronze began.
Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, and has the advantage of being
both harder than pure copper and easier to cast. Its production may be
achieved either by smelting a mixture of copper ores and tin ores, or
by melting together pure copper and pure tin. The very variable
composition of early bronze suggests that the alloy was first produced
from the mixed ores, only later being made by mixing metallic copper
and tin. Several objects of bronze, such as vases, swords and axes,
occur in the celebrated Royal Tombs of Ur, now generally dated at about
2600 B.C. One of the finest ancient examples of ancient metal-work is a
bronze head, generally supposed to be that of Sargon of Agade (c. 2350
B.C.), now in the Iraq Museum (13).

The copper ore used by the people of
South Mesopotamia in the third millennium came either overland from
somewhere in Iran, or by sea up the Persian Gulf from countries called
Magan and Melukhkha, which have not yet been identified, despite
endless discussion. The analyses of copper and bronze objects of this
period show that in Sumerian times it was the surface ores which were
used and not the deeper lying ones (which occur as sulphides); thus no
deep mining was involved. We have some idea of the appearance of the
furnaces in which the ore was smelted, since not only have remains of
furnaces been found, but also one of the Sumerian ideograms meaning
'furnace' is found in a very early form as a recognisable picture of a
furnace:

The fuel used for such a furnace was wood and bundles of reeds. The
smiths had bellows available to increase the draught and raise the
temperature.

The copper produced by smelting would be very impure and would
require further treatment to make it usable for the production of
bronze or for casting as pure copper. This second operation was
probably performed in a different and smaller type of furnace, but we
have no direct evidence about this. There are, however, Egyptian
pictures of metal-workers using a blowpipe on a crucible in a small
furnace, and these probably represent the final purifying of crude
copper before casting. The technique used in Mesopotamia may have been
similar.

For the casting of copper or bronze, there were three methods which
might be used. In order of development, these were the open-mould, the
closed-mould, and the cire perdue (or lost-wax) methods. The
open-mould and the closed-mould methods are self-explanatory, but the cire
perdue method may need a brief description. Basically it was as
follows. A core was made of clay or sand and given a coating of wax, of
which the outer surface was shaped into the required form. A coating of
clay was then put over the wax, leaving holes at top and bottom. If
necessary it could be arranged for wires to run from the inner core to
the outer clay coating to keep them in position relative to each other.
When the clay was dry the whole arrangement was embedded in sand and
heated. The wax ran out of the bottom and molten metal was poured into
the space the wax had previously occupied. When the metal had cooled
the outer coating of clay and the inner core were chipped away.

Other techniques of metal-working already in use in the first half
of the third millennium B.C. included riveting, soldering, hammering
and annealing, and, in the case of precious metals, filigree work and
granulation.

Iron was not-used to any extent in
Mesopotamia (or elsewhere in the Near East) until much later, though a
few specimens, in the form of beads and amulets, do occur from 3000
B.C. onwards. Most of these examples of iron were of meteoric origin,
though there are a few examples of man-made iron from the third
millennium B.C. One may ask why, if iron could be made in the third
millennium B.C., it was not used. The fact was that there was no
inducement to use it, except for ornaments, as not only was it more
difficult to work than bronze but it was also (with the techniques then
available) less strong. The situation did not change markedly until
after 1500 B.C., when it was discovered, presumably in the Hittite
region, that iron could be made extremely hard by the process which we
know as carburising, which at that time could be achieved by keeping
iron in a fire of glowing charcoal for a long period. This new
technique gradually spread throughout the Near East and came into use
in Mesopotamia from about 1300 B.C.

Throughout the 2500 years of ancient Mesopotamian history there were
large numbers of other crafts and industries, but there is space only
to mention a few of the most important. There was the basket-maker, who
exercised a craft going back to prehistoric times, and wove his
products out of reeds, palm leaves, and similar materials. It was
probably he who made the part of the bed which a Babylonian actually
lay on, as the terracotta models of beds indicate that this was of
matting of some kind (76). The person who made the frame of the bed was
of course the carpenter. He also produced such things as chairs and
tables, doors for houses, boats, wagons and chariots, cages for
animals, the wooden parts of ploughs, chests and boxes, and a host of
other things. His principal tools were the hammer, chisel, saw, and
later the bow drill. The hard woods needed by the carpenter had to be
obtained, either by trade or by military expedition, from the Persian
highlands or the Lebanon, since the only timber available in Babylonia
was -palm, willow and Euphrates poplar, none of which are of use for
any but the crudest work, though they were
good for fuel either as cut, or converted into charcoal.

Another very ancient craft was that of the potter, to whom we
possibly owe the invention of the wheel, which we find first employed
for making pottery shortly after 3500 B.C. The potter was a craftsman
whose status was adversely affected by the developments which took
place around 3000 B.C. Before that, the products of the potter had been
finely decorated, so that some of the examples which remain have
considerable aesthetic appeal to most people even today(78).
Unfortunately for the potter's art, with the technological developments
associated with the early Sumerians the situation arose that all really
fine vessels were made of metal or stone, and the ware of the potter
came to be considered as purely utilitarian and no longer worthy of
fine decoration. None the less, the forms of the products of the
Babylonian or Assyrian potter are often of considerable elegance (79,
84).

Other crafts to which a passing
reference may be made were those of the sculptors. There were sculptors
who produced work in ivory or wood and others who worked in stone. We
have no direct evidence that they formed two distinct groups, but the
techniques must have been so different that it is a reasonable
conclusion that this was so. Their work was always in the main destined
to serve as dedications for the temples. There may also be mentioned
the gem-cutters who produced amongst other things the cylinder seals so
widely used by Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian gentlemen.

The crafts mentioned above were a few amongst many which were known
from before 3000 B.C. A craft which developed in Mesopotamia some
centuries after the arrival of the Sumerians was that of the
glass-maker. Some people, knowing that glazed objects and small glass
beads are found in prehistoric Egypt, might be inclined to dispute this
claim, but it should be pointed out that no vessels of worked glass are
found in Egypt before 1500 B.C. This leads the authorities on this
subject to conclude that the Egyptians learnt the craft of
glass-working from Mesopotamia, where pieces of well-made glass are
found as early as the middle of the third millennium B.C.

A number of cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia are known which give
actual recipes for the making of glass or glazes, the earliest of them
coming from 1700 B.C., though the advanced stage reflected by the
earliest texts shows a long previous tradition of glass-making.
Glass-making was not a hit-or-miss affair, and the Mesopotamian
glass-makers knew how to produce different types and colours of their
products by the addition of various ingredients. Modern technologists
have carried out the instructions on the ancient texts and successfully
produced glazed vessels by them.

Once glass had been obtained, the actual technique of making vessels
from it was to soften glass rods by heat and wind them round a central
core of the appropriate shape. The completed vessel would then have its
surface consolidated by further heat treatment, when if required
patterns could be added (80). The technique of glass-blowing was not
invented until the first century B.C.

Chapter VII

LAW

IN December 1901 and January 1902 there were found three large
pieces of diorite (a black rock), bearing an inscription which
revolutionised the current view of the civilisation of the ancient Near
East. Those three pieces of stone, discovered by French archaeologists
excavating at Susa (in ancient times the capital of Elam in southern
Persia), were found to form a single monument. This was the now famous
stele bearing the laws of Hammurabi (82), datable to just before 1750
B.C. Its presence in Susa must have derived from its having at some
time been taken off as booty in an Elamite raid, since its contents
show that it was originally made and set up in Babylonia, possibly at
Babylon itself, though some scholars argue that it came from Sippar.

The Stele of Hammurabi, now in the Louvre, stands about seven feet
six inches high. On the top of the monument is a representation of the
Sun-god, who was also the god of Justice, receiving the homage of King
Hammurabi. Beneath is engraved the text of the inscription: the writing
runs from top to bottom in a number of bands divided horizontally. In
the inscription the laws themselves are sandwiched between a prologue
and an epilogue. The prologue begins with a claim that the gods called
Hammurabi 'to make justice visible in the land, to destroy the wicked
person and the evil-doer, that the strong might not injure the weak',
and contains a series of titles in which Hammurabi boasts of his piety
towards the gods and his care for their cities and shrines. The
epilogue speaks of the purpose of the writing down of the laws, which
is 'to set right the orphan and widow ... and wronged person', and goes
on to recommend succeeding rulers to pay heed to Hammurabi's words, on
pain of incurring the curses of the gods upon whom Hammurabi calls. The
laws themselves consisted originally of about 280 sections, of which
some thirty-five were erased from the stele in antiquity, presumably by
the conqueror who took the monument to Susa. Fortunately, about half
the missing text can now be restored, partly from some diorite
fragments which must come from another monument of the same kind, and
partly from clay tablets of various periods containing parts of
Hammurabi's laws.

The publication of these laws stirred up a violent controversy, of
which the last ripples are still faintly visible in some Scripture
textbooks. Without any doubt these laws had been in existence several
centuries before the period at which Moses, the great Hebrew law giver,
lived. Also without any doubt, the laws of Hammurabi frequently
legislated for the same kind of circumstances, sometimes in almost
identical terms, as those laws, supposedly of divine origin, associated
with the name of Moses' Direct borrowing seemed indicated. Orthodox
theologians, mentally wriggling in embarrassment, sought to point out
that, where similarities could not be denied, the Hebrew laws showed a
higher ethical content. (In fact, this is not always true.) Opponents
of religion gleefully argued that the Hebrew law giver (whether Moses
or some later legislator sheltering beneath the venerable name) had
simply taken over, in the name of his God, as much of the existing
Babylonian law as suited him, adapting it to the more primitive
sociology of the Hebrew people. One such writer stated dogmatically:
'if there be any relationship between the Hebrew and the Babylonian
legislations [and the rest of the little book makes it clear that the
author had no doubts on the matter], there is only one possible
conclusion, and that is that the Hebrew was borrowed from the earlier
Babylonian'.

Later discoveries and research have shown that, though there are
problems in plenty about both the Mosaic law and the laws of Hammurabi,
the controversy about the relationship between the two was based upon a
misunderstanding. Since the original discovery of the Stele of
Hammurabi, there have been found quite a few other collections of laws
from the ancient Near East, four of them certainly older than the laws
of Hammurabi, and these show beyond any doubt that the existence of
written laws, far from being an exceptional circumstance, was a common
and probably an essential element of civilised life. Thus the existence
of two collections of laws at different times in different places did
not necessarily mean that the later was a direct borrowing from the
earlier. Furthermore, any similarities in detail might be adequately
accounted for by acquaintance with customary legal practice and with
the existence of a basically similar social structure, which would give
rise to the need for legislation upon similar matters.

With the earlier controversy no longer relevant, attention has now
turned to a different matter, the origin and purpose of the laws of
Hammurabi in the form in which we know them. Before this point is
discussed, however, it seems advisable to give some account of the
contents of the laws themselves.

The arrangement of the laws shows a deliberate attempt at a
systematic treatment of the material, laws concerned with similar
aspects of life being brought together. Thus the first five sections,
containing laws dealing with false accusations, false witness, and
corrupt judges, have as their common link the administration of
justice. A brief analysis of the whole of the laws may be made as
follows:

Administration of justice (5 sections)

Offences against property (20 sections)

Land tenure (about 50 sections)

Trade and commercial transactions (nearly 40 sections)

The family as a social institution (68 sections), covering
such matters as adultery, marriage, concubinage, desertion, divorce,
incest, adoption, inheritance.

Penalties for assault (20 sections)

Professional services (16 sections), concerning rates of
payment for satisfactory, and penalties for unsatisfactory, performance
of services.

Draught-oxen (16 sections), dealing with such matters as
rates of hire, mishaps to oxen let out on hire, dangerous oxen.

Agriculture and herdsmen (11 sections), including wage rates
of labourers and herdsmen, and dishonesty.

Rates of hire of animals, wagons or boats: wages of labourers and
craftsmen (10 sections)

Ownership and sale of slaves (5 sections)

It need hardly be pointed out that it can be misleading to quote
particular laws without at the same time considering the social
situation in which they arose, but with this warning the following are
offered as specimens of the laws on the Stele of Hammurabi. The
headings are explanatory comments by the present author and not part of
the original text.

3, 4 False witness

If a man has come forward in a lawsuit for the witnessing of false
things, and has not proved the thing that he said, if that lawsuit is a
capital case, that man shall be put to death. If he came forward for
witnessing about corn or silver, he shall bear the penalty (which would
apply to) that case.

16 Theft by finding

If a man has concealed in his house a lost slave or slave-girl
belonging to the Palace or to a subject, and has not brought him [or
her] out at the proclamation of the Crier, the owner of the house shall
be put to death. [To those whose attitude to slavery is coloured by
memories of Uncle Tom's Cabin, it should be emphasised that the man
concealing the slave would certainly have had no idea of making a
'direct action' protest against slavery as an institution. He was
simply a rogue who hoped, by keeping quiet about his find, to acquire
someone else's slave for nothing.]

25 Looting

If a fire has broken out in a man's house, and a man who has gone to
extinguish it has cast his eye on the property of the owner of the
house and has taken the property of the owner of the house, that man
shall be thrown into the fire.

48 Moratorium in case of hardship

If a man is subject to a debt bearing interest, and Adad [the
Weather-god] has saturated his field or a high flood has carried (its
crop) away, or because of lack of water he has not produced corn in
that field, in that year he shall not return any corn to (his)
creditor. He shall cancel [literally 'wet'] his tablet, and he shall
not pay interest for that year.

128 The status 'wife' depends upon a contract

If a man has taken a wife, but has not set down a contract for her,
that woman is not (legally) a wife. [The contract concerned need not
have been of a complicated form. One from the period of the Third
Dynasty of Ur, over two centuries before Hammurabi, reads as follows:
'Puzur-khaya has taken Ubartum as his wife. The oath by the King has
been taken before [four named persons], acting as witnesses. Year in
which Enamgalanna was installed as En-priest of Inanna.']

129, 132 Adultery

If a gentleman's wife has been caught
lying with another male, they shall tie them up and throw them into the
water. If the wife's lord lets his wife live, then the King shall let
his servant live.

If there is a gentleman's wife against whom the finger has been
pointed on account of another male, but she has not been caught lying
with another male, for her husband's sake she shall jump into the holy
river. [This refers not to compulsory suicide, but to establishing the
woman's innocence of guilt by the river ordeal. On the river ordeal,
see below, p. 86.]

141 Treatment of a wastrel wife

If a gentleman's wife, living in the gentleman's house, has set her
mind to go out [this probably means that she sets up a separate house
rather than that she goes out on a shopping spree], and spends(?)
(their) assets(?), and squanders her household and makes her husband('s
estate) small, this shall be proved against her; if her husband then
says he will divorce her, he may divorce her and nothing shall be given
to her as divorce-money for her journey. If her husband does not say he
will divorce her, her husband may marry another woman, and that woman
[i.e. the original wife] shall remain in her husband's house as a
slave-girl.

146, 147 Concubinage

If a man has married a Naditu-priestess, and she has given a slave
girl to her husband and (the slave-girl) has borne children, and
afterwards that slave-girl puts herself on a par with her mistress,
because she has borne children her mistress may not sell her for
silver, but she may put a slave-mark on her and number her with the
slave-girls. If she has not borne children, her mistress may sell her
for silver.

153 'The eternal triangle'

If a gentleman's wife has had her husband killed on account of
another man, they shall impale that woman on a stake.

157 Incest

If a man after (the death of) his father lies sexually with his
mother, they shall burn both of them.

165 Inheritance, and the right to bequeath property by will

If a man has donated field, orchard or house to his favourite heir
and has written a sealed document for him (to confirm this), after the
father has gone to his doom, when the brothers share he [the favourite
heir] shall take the gift that his father gave him, and apart from that
they shall share equally in the property of the paternal estate.

1 88, 189 Adoption and apprenticeship

If an artisan has taken a child for bringing up, and has taught him
his manual skill, (the child) shall not be (re)claimed. If he has not

taught him his manual skill, that pupil may return to his father's

house.

195-99, 205, 206 Assault

If a son has struck his father, they shall cut off his hand.

If a man has destroyed the eye of a man of the 'gentleman' class,
they shall destroy his eye. If he has broken a gentleman's bone, they
shall break his bone. If he has destroyed the eye of a commoner or
broken a bone of a commoner, he shall pay one Mina of silver. If he has
destroyed the eye of a gentleman's slave, or broken a bone of a
gentleman's slave, he shall pay half (the slave's) price.

If a gentleman's slave strikes the cheek of a man of the 'gentleman'
class, they shall cut off (the slave's) ear.

If a gentleman strikes a gentleman in a free fight and inflicts an
injury on him, that man shall swear 'I did not strike him
deliberately', and he shall pay the surgeon. [i.e. the man's liability
is limited to paying the surgeon.]

215-18 Fees and penalties connected with surgery

If a surgeon has made a serious wound [presumably meaning 'a deep
incision'] in a gentleman with a bronze knife, and has thereby saved
the gentleman's life.... he shall receive ten shekels of silver. If
(the patient is) a commoner, he shall receive five shekels of silver.
If (the patient is) a gentleman's slave, the slave's master shall pay
the surgeon two shekels of silver.

If the surgeon has made a serious wound in a gentleman with a bronze
knife, and has thereby caused the gentleman to die, they shall cut off
(the surgeon's) hand.

229-30 Treatment of jerry-builders

If a builder has made a house for a man but has not made his work
strong, so that the house he made falls down and causes the death of
the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death. If it
causes the death of the son of the owner of the house, they shall kill
the son of that builder.

250-52 The goring ox

If an ox, as it went along the street, gored a man and so caused his
death, there is no ground for claim in that case. If a man's ox is
habitually given to goring, and the man's local authority has notified
him that it is habitually given to goring, and he has not protected its
horns (86) (nor) restrained 86 Ox, with one horn removed and the (the
movements of) his ox, other capped to prevent goring and that ox has
gored a man of the 'gentleman' class and caused his death, he shall pay
half a Mina of silver. If (the man killed) is a gentleman's slave, he
shall pay one-third of a Mina of silver.

It may have been noticed that so far the word 'code' has been
avoided in connection with the legal contents of the Stele of
Hammurabi. This has been deliberate, to avoid prejudicing the issue of
what the legal work concerned actually was. The term 'code', defined in
The Concise Oxford Dictionary as 'a body of laws so arranged as to
avoid inconsistency and overlapping', implies the systematic treatment
of law on the basis of a particular theory of law. Can this term
properly be applied to the laws of Hammurabi? The most recent
substantial discussion of this problem has been that of Professor F. R.
Kraus of Leiden, and what follows is largely based on his published
article.

It will be clear, from the examples of laws quoted, that every legal
pronouncement in the laws of Hammurabi is given in the form 'If
such-and-such has happened, then such-and-such will result.' Their very
form suggests that they may be different in some way from laws drawn up
in the 'Thou shalt not' form, which are obviously general prohibitions.
What we have been referring to as 'the laws' of Hammurabi are not in
the stele itself called by a word meaning 'laws', and indeed there is
not even a word for the conception 'law' in the language of the period
concerned. The 'laws' are in fact referred to by a term which means
'judgements' or 'legal decisions'. It was one of the most important
duties of an ancient Semitic ruler to give a just decision in disputes,
and the term used indicates that King Hammurabi's 'laws' were intended
as decisions of this kind. This does not mean, however, that the
central part of the text of the stele is a straightforward collection
of royal verdicts. We have many examples of records of specific
lawsuits, and their normal form is quite different from that of the
sections of the 'laws' of Hammurabi. There are other reasons for
regarding the legal core of the text of Hammurabi's Stele as more than
a simple collection of decisions about cases which had actually been
brought to the King's notice. There are some groups of laws in which
some sections would seem to be decisions about real cases which had
actually come before the King, whilst others seem to have been invented
as elaborations or analogies. A group of 'laws' which shows this
clearly is a passage dealing with the consequence of a man's striking a
woman and causing a miscarriage. The first 'decision' concerns the
straightforward case of a man striking a free woman, who in consequence
suffered a miscarriage. Following this are elaborations in which the
woman struck was a low-caste woman or a slave, and others in which the
women of the three social classes had died in consequence of the blow.
Unless it is assumed that the beating-up of pregnant women was a
popular Babylonian pastime, Hammurabi can hardly have had to decide
separately upon each of these six circumstances, which leads us to the
conclusion that some at least of these particular decisions were upon
hypothetical cases. To this degree there is some justification for
applying the term 'code' to the contents of the Stele of Hammurabi.

Each section of the 'laws' was not simply a decision in, one
specific case, but was intended to serve as a basis for the treatment
of every similar case that arose throughout the land, both during the
reign of Hammurabi and thereafter. They were not so much laws as
precedents, even though in some cases fictitious ones. As Professor
Kraus puts it, the so-called 'laws' were 'specimen decisions, patterns
for good administration of justice'. This is clear from the specific
advice which Hammurabi offered to his successors:

To the end of days, for ever, may the king who happens to be in the
land observe the words of justice which I have inscribed on my stele;
... if that man has the sanction (of the gods) and so is able to give
his land justice, let him pay heed to the words which I have written on
my stele, and let that stele show him the accustomed way, the way to
follow, the land's judgements which I have judged and the land's
decisions which I have decided.

Did the contents of the Stele of
Hammurabi represent a reform? This is a question which has been much
discussed, and the answer depends upon what one understands by
'reform'. If one means, was Hammurabi attempting to make deliberate
alterations in the social structure and general legal practice of his
land, the answer is certainly that in this sense the 'laws' were not a
reform. On the other hand, there had undoubtedly been differences of
practice in some matters in different parts of Babylonia, and it is a
reasonable supposition (though one which has not yet actually been
proved) that Hammurabi wished to secure a uniform pattern of justice
throughout his land. If this was so, then for some parts of the country
at least, some of the decisions are likely to have represented changes
radical enough to be regarded as reforms.

The 'laws' of Hammurabi did not arise in a vacuum. There was already
a long tradition not only of kings giving decisions in specific cases
but also of their having collections of their decisions committed to
writing. Four principal collections of 'laws' earlier than Hammurabi
are known, the most extensive and best preserved of these being what
are known as the 'laws of Eshnunna'. Eshnunna was a kingdom, centred on
a city of the same name, which flourished in the Diyala region during
the two centuries before Hammurabi unified Babylonia (1761 B.C.).
Amongst the towns of this kingdom was one called Shaduppum, now
represented by a small mound called Tell Harmal on the outskirts of
Baghdad. It was at this site that Iraqi archaeologists, excavating
shortly after the Second World War, found two copies, inscribed on clay
tablets, of the collection of laws referred to. Damage at vital points
has destroyed the evidence which might have given an exact date for the
original compilation of the collection of laws, but there are good
grounds for the conclusion that these laws originated at least a
century earlier than the time of Hammurabi.

In the laws of Eshnunna the arrangement shows significant
differences from that of the Stele of Hammurabi. There is no elaborate
prologue, its place being taken by a date. Following this comes a
tariff of prices, in the following form:

1 gur of barley for 1 shekel of silver;

3 qa of refined oil for 1 shekel of silver;

.ààààààààààààààà...

6 minas of wool for 1 shekel of silver;

2 gur of salt for 1 shekel of silver.

Some commentators call this a tariff of maximum prices, but this
makes certain unproven assumptions about the nature of the ancient
economy. It seems more likely that these were fixed prices laid down in
an attempt to give stability to the economy, rather than maximum prices
controlled in an attempt to protect consumers.

A list of prices is also found in the laws of Hammurabi, but there
it is by no means so prominent. Elsewhere there are other fragments of
official price lists. Such details are significant pointers to the
origin of the collections of royal 'laws'. They seem to suggest that
originally there would be promulgated an official price list of staple
commodities, and that gradually there would be appended to this records
of other royal decisions on points arising from typical economic and
social problems. The laws of Eshnunna show the result in a fairly
rudimentary stage with the price tariff at the beginning; Hammurabi's
laws are cast in a framework of considerable literary sophistication,
and merely retain a few traces of the price tariff at the very end.

The way in which decisions upon particular cases could come to be
added to the original price list is illustrated in the sections of the
laws of Eshnunna directly following the price list of cornmodities.
These sections concern rates of hire of wagons and ships, and the wages
of the wagoner or boatman. The actual text reads:

3 For a wagon with its oxen and its driver, the hire is 1 pan
and 4 seah of barley; if in silver, its hire is one-third of a
shekel. He shall drive it for the whole day.

4 The hire of a boat is 2 qa (of barley) per gur (of
hold space); 1 qa (of barley) is the hire of the boatman. He
shall drive it for the whole day.

5 If a boatman is negligent and sinks the boat, he shall pay in full
for as much (cargo) as he sinks.

It seems reasonable conclusion that 3 and 4 were originally closely
related to the list of commodity prices. 5 will then have represented a
royal decision arising out of a boatman's claim under 4, when the hirer
of some boat had refused to pay at the prescribed rate, on the ground
that the boat had come to grief and caused him loss.

Another instance of the same kind is provided by 7-9. Here first of
all the wages of agricultural labourers of different kinds are laid
down. Then follows a decision upon a case related to this, where a
Tabourer, hired under the terms laid down, had been paid in advance and
then failed to turn up to do his work.

There is no space to give extensive quotations from particular
sections of the laws of Eshnunna, and it is largely unnecessary, since
about three-quarters of the laws of Eshnunna are very similar to laws
in the Stele of Hammurabi. The details sometimes differ slightly, but
with one major exception there are no basic differences of attitude.
The exception occurs in the laws dealing with assault, for which at
Eshnunna the penalty would at first sight appear to come nearer to
modern practice than does either the 'code' of Hammurabi or the Old
Testament legislation, both of which lay down the principle of 'an eye
for an eye'. In the laws of Eshnunna the penalty takes the form of a
fine, thus:

42 If a man bites a man's nose and so severs it, he shall pay one
mina of silver. For an eye, one mina; for a tooth, half a mina; for an
ear, half a mina; for a blow on the face he shall pay ten shekels of
silver. 43 If a man has severed a man's finger, he shall pay two-thirds
of a mina of silver.... 45 If he has broken (a man's) foot, he shall
pay half a mina of silver.

However, at the end of these sections there is a further section,
unfortunately damaged on both extant tablets, which may reasonably be
restored to read:

48 And in addition, in cases with penalties from one-third of a mina
to one mina, they shall try the man. If it is a capital matter, it is a
matter for the King.

This is a clear indication that the payment of damages did not
necessarily settle the affair. Whether a man tried in these
circumstances and found guilty of assault was mutilated or put to death
is not certain, but the possibility is not to be excluded. It would
certainly be misleading to draw hasty conclusions about the allegedly
more humane tone of these laws and certain other (Sumerian) laws which
specify a financial penalty for assault. It may well have been taken
for granted in all such cases that the damages paid by the man guilty
of assault were additional to a traditionally accepted physical
punishment.

One further law from Eshnunna, not paralleled in the 'code' of
Hammurabi, is worth quoting, since it reflects a practice also known
from one of the most famous stories in the, Old Testament. The law in
question reads (according to Professor A. Goetze's interpretation of
several words of uncertain meaning):

25 If a man offers service in the house of a (potential)
father-in-law, and his (potential) father-in-law accepts him in bondage
and then gives his daughter to another man, the father of the girl
shall return twofold the bride-price which he received (in the form of
service).

The parallel in the situation to that of Jacob serving Laban seven
years for Rachel, only to be tricked at the end (Genesis xxix
15-30), cannot be missed, though it may be added that Laban claimed (Genesis
xxix 26) that according to the customary law of the Haran region he was
justified in acting as he did towards Jacob.

As already mentioned, in addition to the laws of Eshnunna there are
known at least three other collection of laws of earlier date than the
code of Hammurabi. Two of these, the laws respectively of the rulers
Ur-Nammu (2113-2096 B.C.) and Lipit-Ishtar (1934-1924 B.C.) are in
Sumerian. The third group referred to comprises a few sections of the
laws of an Assyrian merchant colony which existed in Anatolia (eastern
Turkey) about 1900 B.C.; these laws, written in the Assyrian dialect of
Akkadian, concern commercial and administrative procedure.

From the Near East in the period between Hammurabi and Moses come
some Hittite laws (which fall outside the scope of this work) and some
further Assyrian laws, datable to between 1450 and 1250 B.C. The most
extensive section preserved from these latter laws is mainly concerned
with legislation involving women. The matters concerned may be
summarised as follows: sacrilegious theft; blasphemy or sedition;
illicit sale or loan by a woman of her husband's property, or theft
from another man; assault by a woman; assault upon a woman; murder;
rape of a married woman; adultery; accusation of immorality against a
man's wife; slander against a man's wife or a man; homosexuality
amongst men; assault by a man upon a woman, causing miscarriage;
employment of married woman as business agent; procuring; harbouring a
runaway wife; inheritance; espousal; various forms of marriage;
divorce; married women to be veiled; prostitutes and slave-girls to be
unveiled; procedure for marriage in specified circumstances; creditor's
rights of corporal punishment over man or woman held as pledge for a
debt; remarriage of woman whose husband is presumed dead; provision for
a widow; treatment of men or women accused of black magic; limitation
of creditor's rights over girl held as security for debt; [damaged];
assault by fl. a man upon various classes of woman, causing
miscarriage; a woman's self-induced abortion; rape of a virgin;
fornication by a virgin; administrative procedure for inflicting
corporal punishment or mutilation upon a married women.

In general, although these laws are several centuries later than
those of Hammurabi, the penalties show a more barbarous spirit, in many
cases involving mutilation. The following extracts give some idea of
the contents and the tone of the Assyrian laws:

3 If a man is ill or dead, and his wife has stolen something from
his house and delivered it either to a (free) man or to a (free) woman
or to anyone else, the man's wife and the receivers shall be put to
death. And if a married woman, whose husband is in sound health, has
stolen something from her husband's house and delivered it either to a
(free) man or to a (free) woman, or to anyone else, the man shall
charge his wife and shall impose the punishment; and the receiver ...
shall give up the stolen thing, and a punishment like that which the
man imposed on his wife shall be imposed on the receiver.

15 If a man has caught a man with his wife and has then brought a
charge against him and proved it against him, both of them shall be put
to death; there is no guilt in this. If he has caught (him) and brought
(him) before either the King or the judges, and has brought a charge
against him and proved it against him, if the woman's husband kills his
wife, he shall likewise kill the man; if he cuts off his wife's nose,
he shall make the man a eunuch and shall slash the whole of his face;
but if he lets his wife off, the man shall be let off.

27 If a woman is living in her father's house and her husband
regularly goes in (to her there), any settlement which her husband has
delivered to her is his (property), he may take it. He may not lay
claim to anything belonging to her father's house. [This probably
refers to an ancient type of marriage in which the woman continued to
live in the household in which she had grown up, being visited by her
husband only at night. There are still parts of the world in which this
kind of marriage is usual.]

34 If a man has taken a widow, but has not drawn up a contract for
her, if she lives in his house for two years, she (becomes) a wife; she
shall not (be compelled to) go away.

40 Wives, whether married women or widows. . ., who go out into the
street, shall not have their heads uncovered. . . A member of the harem
who goes out with her mistress into the street shall be veiled. A
sacred prostitute whom a husband has married shall have her head
covered in the street, but one whom a husband has not married shall
have her head uncovered in the street; she shall not veil herself. A
common harlot shall not veil herself; her head shall be uncovered.
Anyone who sees a common harlot veiled shall arrest(?) her. He shall
produce men as witnesses and bring her to the Palace. They may not take
her jewellery but the man who arrested her may take her clothing. They
shall beat her fifty strokes with rods, and they shall pour pitch on
her head. And if a man has seen a common harlot veiled and has let her
go and has not brought her to the Palace, they shall beat that man
fifty strokes with rods; the man who denounced him shall take his
clothing; they shall pierce his ears and thread (them) with a cord and
shall tie it behind him; he shall do service for the King for one
complete month.... [The law goes on to say that slave girls must
likewise not be veiled; the penalty for a slave-girl's contravention of
this regulation was to have her ears cut off. A man who failed in his
duty of reporting an offending slave-girl was liable to the penalty
prescribed above.]

59 Leaving aside the penalties relating to a married woman which are
inscribed on the tablet, a man may flog his wife, pull out her hair,
split and injure her ears. There is no legal guilt (involved) in it.

In addition to those Middle Assyrian laws dealt with above, there
are less extensive remains of other groups of laws of the same period,
the two principal tablets dealing respectively with land tenure and
commercial transactions.

It is almost unnecessary to point out that the average citizen of
ancient Mesopotamia, like his modern counterpart, was usually concerned
not with the theoretical aspects of law and its origin but with the
manner in which it operated to protect his own interests. If, for
example, a person found that his neighbour was claiming rights over a
field which he considered his own property, what steps could he take to
have his rights protected? We know something about the answer to this
question, as there are many documents dealing with problems of this
kind. Let us consider a particular case from the reign of Hammurabi's
successor, Samsu-iluna.

A man Ibbi-Shamash fell out with a priestess Naram-tani over the
ownership of a plot of land. Naram-tani had inherited the plot from an
aunt Nishi-inishu, also a priestess, who, Naram-tani had always
understood, had bought it from the father of lbbi-Shamash fifty-two
years before. lbbi-Shamash now claimed, however, that the plot his
father had actually sold to Nishi-inishu had been a smaller one, and
that Nishi-inishu had wrongfully taken possession of the larger plot in
question. Ibbi-Shamash and Naram-tani were unable to agree upon the
matter and so they took the case to the Registrar and judges of their
city, Sippar. The officials duly heard the claims of both parties and
would certainly have heard the testimony of the original witnesses to
the sale had they been available, but there is no mention of such
witnesses, not surprisingly in view of the half century which had
elapsed. The judges therefore simply settled the matter by examining
the original tablet of sale drawn
up over
fifty years before. This might at first telling appear to give ample
scope for forgery by the family which had had the keeping of the
original tablet, but the ingenious procedure with contract tablets at
this period prevented this. The procedure was to write out a clay
tablet with the terms of contract, the contracting parties and
witnesses then rolling their seals over the blank portions of the
tablet. The scribe drawing up the document would then take another
piece of clay, flatten it out, and fold it over the original tablet to
make a sealed envelope of the same shape as the original tablet. On
this envelope would then be written the terms of the original contract,
cylinder seals being rolled over the document as before (88). The text
on the envelope would of course be subject to deliberate falsification
or obliteration by wear, but the original inner tablet could not be
touched without breaking the envelope. What the judges did in the case
in question was to break the envelope and read the intact tablet
within. They found that the plot of land bought by Nishi-inishu
fifty-two years before was clearly stated to be the size of the plot
currently claimed by her niece Naram-tani, who therefore won the case.
A document was drawn up giving details of the case and the decision and
concluding with a clause forbidding lbbi-Shamash to reopen the case
against Naram-tani. It is from the actual document drawn up at the end
of the case that we are acquainted with all the foregoing details.

Naturally there were many cases in which citizens fell out with each
other in which the truth could not be ascertained in this simple way by
reference to written documents. In such cases the parties concerned
came before the judges, each party telling his story and bringing
witnesses who were prepared to swear to the truth of it. At some
periods free citizens in general could sit with the judges to
constitute a body known as the Assembly, which may have served as a
kind of primitive jury. There was no prosecuting or defending counsel,
and there was no cross-examination of witnesses, the telling of the
truth being ensured as far as possible by making witnesses and
litigants take the oath by the gods. If there was an irreconcilable
conflict between the evidence of the two parties, the judges then had
recourse to the ordeal, whereby the accused person was required to be
judged by the River-god. This meant that he was required to jump into
the river, which if he were guilty of a false oath would drown him.
This might appear to put all the risk on the accused person, but in
fact if the accused person went through with the ordeal procedure
(which he would presumably only dare to do if he were convinced of his
own innocence) and came safely back, his accuser would be put to death.
Amongst the Mari letters there is one which makes this quite clear. One
King wrote to another saying that he was sending two men under escort
accused of some crime, and asking that they should be submitted to the
river ordeal. The King making the request explained that he had
detained the accuser, and that if the two men accused came safely back,
he would have the accuser burnt t ' o death. If on the other hand the
accused men drowned, their estates would be handed over to the man who
had accused them.

The manner in which fear of the consequences of a false oath might
produce the truth is shown by the following document, which comes from
the city of Nuzi, in eastern Assyria, about 1400 B.C.:

Tekhip-tilla son of Pukhisheni came before the judges in a lawsuit
with Tilliya son of Taya.

Tilliya the oxherd had flayed three oxen of Tekhip-tilla in the town
of Katiri. Tekhip-tilla's witnesses spoke to this effect before the
judges: 'Tilliya flayed three oxen of Tekhip-tilla without (the
authority of) the cattle-overseer(?), and he was caught over the three
oxen, whilst he was flaying them.'

So the judges said to Tilliya: 'Go! Take the oath of the gods
against the witnesses and the cattle-overseer(?).' But he was unwilling
to take the oath of the gods. Tilliya turned back from (submitting the
case to) the gods. So Tekhip-tilla was successful in the lawsuit and
they imposed on Tilliya (the payment of) three oxen to Tekhip-tilla.

Seal of A, seal of B, seal of C, seal of D, seal of E; hand of X son
of Y [this final entry indicates the scribe]

As to penalties for criminal conduct, the death penalty is
frequently referred to in the laws of Hammurabi, whilst the Assyrian
laws mention, as will have been noticed, several forms of mutilation as
penalties. One text sums up the matter of legal penalties by saying
that a man who commits a felony is either executed, or flayed, or
blinded, or fettered, or thrown into prison. Often, however, the system
was not as brutal in practice as this might suggest. A money payment
might be acceptable in place of punishment, and we find mention of such
settlements as 'silver received in lieu of the cutting off of
[so-and-so's] hand, and in lieu of the imprisonment of [so-and-so]'. In
general, prolonged close imprisonment was not usual; this was not,
probably, on any humanitarian grounds but mainly because if a person
had the right to restrict another's liberty it would be more efficient
to make him a slave and put him to work.

Chapter VIII

NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S BABYLON

THE time of Babylon's greatest material wealth and splendour, and
the period which is reflected in much of the later tradition about
Babylon, was the reign of Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 B.C.). We are
fortunate in having a fair amount of information about the city at this
period, not only from Biblical and Greek tradition, but also from
Nebuchadnezzar's own building inscriptions, and from the business,
legal and administrative records of his reign. Important information
has also been obtained from the excavation of the city itself (91),
notably in the dig directed by the German, Robert Koldewey, between
1899 and 1917. Taken together, these strands of evidence give us a
fairly clear outline of life in the Babylonian capital under
Nebuchadnezzar II, though of course there are many details which we do
not yet know and some which we may never know.

At the time of Nebuchadnezzar the city
of Babylon spread out on both sides of the Euphrates. What we may call
the 'old city' was the part on the east bank, and this was somewhat
larger than the 'new city' opposite. Close by the east bank and in the
centre of the city as a whole stood Etemenanki, 'House of the platform
of Heaven and Earth', the great seven-storeyed ziggurrat or temple
tower (90), already very old but splendidly rebuilt at this time. This
was possibly the original behind the 'tower of Babel' story of the
Bible (Genesis xi 1-9), though of course the Biblical tradition relates
to a period over 2000 years before Nebuchadnezzar. This great tower,
with a small temple on its summit, rose to a height of almost 300 feet
and dominated the view across the plain for many miles around. The
dimensions varied at different rebuildings, but excavations show its
base at its maximum extent to have formed a square with sides of about
300 feet. This ziggurrat's main mass was of trodden clay, though there
was a casing of burnt brick nearly 50 feet thick. A staircase about 30
feet wide led up to the first and second stages; how the higher stages
were reached is not certain, but presumably there were further
staircases or ramps.

Etemenanki stood in an enclosure surrounded by a continuous line of
brick-built chambers or double walls. Some of these chambers were
certainly store-rooms. Others were probably houses for priests and
other persons engaged in the service of religion, or perhaps (some
people have suggested) lodgings for
pilgrims.

Just to the south of the Etemenanki enclosure, and intimately
associated with it, was the great temple-complex of Esagila, 'House of
the Raised Head'. This contained not only the principal shrine sacred
to the city-god Marduk (otherwise called Bel, 'The Lord'), but also
others sacred to Marduk's son Nabu and a number of other deities. We
have accounts of Esagila and Etemenanki both from Greek writers and
from cuneiform tablets, one of the latter giving a detailed account of
the measurements of both structures.

Inside Esagila the main chapel of Marduk was a chamber measuring
some 66 feet by 132. This must have presented a scene of dazzling
splendour, for, to quote simply one detail, Nebuchadnezzar himself
records that he overlaid the whole of its interior, including the
rafters, with gold. On a pedestal inside the chapel stood golden images
of Marduk and his consort Sarpanitum, whilst images of divine
attendants stood on either side of the supreme pair. These attendants
included hairdressers for Sarpanitum, a butler and a baker, a
door-keeper, and dogs. Statues of winged creatures called Kurub (whence
our word 'Cherub') guarded the entrance. All these images were heavily
decorated with gold and precious stones and dressed in rich raiment,
but except for glimpses from the courtyard the ordinary Babylonian had
to take this on hearsay, for it is unlikely that at the period of
Nebuchadnezzar anyone other than the King, the Crown Prince and certain
priests ever entered the inner shrine.

There were other temples in the city quite distinct from Esagila.
Within the temples the usual (though not the invariable) layout was as
follows. The god's statue stood in the middle of one long wall of an
oblong chapel, and in the wall opposite was a doorway into an
ante-chamber. The ante-chamber was very similar in shape to the main
chapel and ran parallel to it. In the wall of the antechamber farthest
from the chapel was another doorway giving access from the main
courtyard, so that when both the antechamber door and the chapel door
were open the populace could see through to the statue of the god
himself. In the case of Marduk's shrine the doors opened towards a
point a little to the north of east, as befitted a sun-god, though some
other temples had quite different orientations. At the sides and back
of the antechamber and chapel and around the courtyard there was a
series of other chambers, used no doubt as store-rooms for the
equipment used in the cult.

The temple-complexes themselves did not mark the whole of the piety
of the Babylonians, for along many of the streets, particularly at the
approaches to the temples, at the city gates and at cross-roads, were
to be found small altars. These amounted, according to the cuneiform
texts listing such things, to nearly 400, of which some have been found
in excavations. In addition to these there were, according to the same
series of texts, nearly a thousand roadside shrines scattered about the
city.

In the northern part of the old city, just inside the inner walls,
stood the principal palace of Nebuchadnezzar. As was usual in the
ancient Near East, this was not only a royal residence but also a
garrison and an administrative centre. Basically this palace (which
went back to a period long before Nebuchadnezzar) was built round a
series of five courtyards, used respectively (going from east to west)
for the garrison, the secretariat, the State rooms, the King's private
quarters, and the women's apartments or harem. In the women's
apartments there lived not only Nebuchadnezzar's queen but also
concubines sent to the King from all parts of the Empire. This was of
course usual with ancient Oriental monarchs. One might imagine that
with so many women, shut away with no company but their own, and with
most of them sexually frustrated, strife and quarrelling sometimes
broke out in the royal harem-and it did. We know this without any doubt
as we have a cuneiform text (earlier than the time of Nebuchadnezzar)
laying down regulations to deal with such problems in a royal harem.

It is hardly possible to discuss the
Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar without mentioning the famous Hanging Gardens
which he is credited with planting there (92). The difficulty is to
disentangle fact from legend. Unfortunately, although there are plenty
of references to the Hanging Gardens in classical authors, indicating
that there must have been some striking piece of landscape gardening in
the city, there is little if any evidence of them from cuneiform texts
of the period. However, the classical writers must have had some basis
for their reports and the Hanging Gardens cannot be dismissed out of
hand as figments of the imagination. According to the classical
writers, the gardens were installed by a king to please a Persian
concubine who was depressed by the unbroken flatness and longed for her
native mountains. It was supposed to have been built near the river on
a foundation of arched vaults, and to have risen in a series of
terraces to a height of 75 feet. The whole structure was then
waterproofed with bitumen, baked brick, and lead, with the object of
keeping the vaults underneath it dry. Finally the terraces were covered
with earth to a depth sufficient to support even large trees. Trees
were then planted and provided with a constant supply of water from the
Euphrates by irrigation machines.

There is some archaeological evidence which could be related to the
classical traditions. In the north-eastern corner of the palace
mentioned above, the archaeologists found a structure which seemed to
have no parallel elsewhere. Basically this structure consisted of two
rows of seven vaulted chambers beneath ground level. The central
chambers had thicker walls than the outer ones, and this might mean
that the central chambers had been intended to bear a greater weight
than the outer ones. This is just what the situation would have been if
the vaulted chambers had been the sub-structure bearing the weight of a
terraced hill of earth, arranged as described by the classical authors.

Whether or not it was the Hanging
Gardens which were supported by these vaulted chambers, the chambers
themselves were certainly used as offices or store-rooms, since tablets
have been found in them dealing with grain issues. Amongst these
tablets were some actually referring to the Jehoiachin King of Judah
taken prisoner by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon (2 Kings xxiv 15).
Because of this, some people have suggested that the underground
chambers were really dungeons for political prisoners, but this does
not follow. One would expect to find lists of rations issued to
prisoners either in the records office or in the stores, not in the
prisoners' cells.

Like every city, Babylon was recognised by its inhabitants as being
made up of a number of distinct districts, the names and
characteristics of some of which we know. Roughly speaking, the
temples, palaces and other public buildings were in the western half of
the old city, with the residential quarters in the eastern half and
across the Euphrates in the new city (though the new city also
contained several temples)(94). Its main streets were laid out in a
direction from north-west to south-east, the object of this being to
give the city the full benefit of the prevailing north-west wind to
carry away smells and keep the temperature down. The streets of
Babylon, of which twenty-four are mentioned in one text, bore names
like 'Marduk shepherd of his land', 'He hears from afar, and 'May the
enemy not have victory'. The last was the name of a section of a road
which entered the city through the Ishtar Gate in the north wall, just
east of the palace (1). This road is now usually known as the
Processional Way, from the fact of its being the principal street used
by Marduk when the priests took him through the city on ceremonial
occasions. It was an efficient piece of road engineering; up to 66 feet
wide in parts, it consisted of a brick foundation covered with asphalt
to form a bed for large paving slabs of limestone. The north approach
to the Ishtar Gate took the traveller between high walls decorated with
rows of lions, sixty on each side, in red, white and yellow enamelled
tiles (89). A similar technique was employed inside the Ishtar Gate
itself, where bulls and dragons were depicted(93). From the Ishtar Gate
the Processional Way ran parallel to the Euphrates half-way through the
old city and then turned west to pass between Etemenanki and Esagila
towards the river, where it passed over a bridge into the western half
of Babylon. The remains of this bridge have been found, and it proves
to have been built on piles made of bricks bonded with bitumen. These
piles were 30 feet wide and 30 feet apart, except near the western bank
where the gap was 60 feet, to facilitate the passage of ships. The
piles were rough boat-shaped, their sides curving inwards to a point at
the upstream end to cut down resistance to the current. The classical
writers speak of this as a stone bridge, which presumably indicates
that the piles were crowned with stone blocks which carried the bridge
itself, running from one pile to the next on heavy wooden beams. The
course of the Processional Way in the western half of Babylon can only
be guessed, since the Euphrates has changed its bed and now flows
through the middle of that part.

Winding through the old city, making a wide curve from its inlet
from the Euphrates in the north-west corner to the point at which it
passed through the inner wall in the south-east, was the ancient canal
Libil-hegalla, whose name meant 'May it bring prosperity'. The origin
of this canal may well have gone back to Hammurabi 1200 years before,
but it was Nebuchadnezzar who restored it, lining its bed with bitumen
and burnt brick. Other less venerable canals brought prosperity to the
gardens and orchards of the new city on the west bank and to the
suburbs on both sides.

The whole city was protected by formidable fortifications. Around
the main built-up area on both sides of the Euphrates ran a powerful
defensive system consisting of a double wall of unbaked brick with an
encircling moat. The inner part of this double wall was 21 feet thick,
with towers regularly placed every 59 feet. Separated by a space of 24
feet was the outer part of the wall, 12 feet thick, with towers every
67 feet. Outside the walls came the moat, with its bed lined with burnt
brick and bitumen; the source of its water was of course the Euphrates.
Entrance to the city was through the Ishtar Gate or one of seven other
powerfully fortified great gates, which all had massive doors armoured
in bronze. The bridges over the moat which must have existed in normal
times would no doubt be dismantled in times of emergency.

As a further protection to the city, Nebuchadnezzar constructed a
great outer fortification, consisting of another double wall which,
starting from the east bank of the Euphrates a mile-and-a-half north of
the Ishtar Gate, ran in a south-easterly direction to a point level
with Esagila, and then turned south-westwards to meet the Euphrates
again, a quarter of a mile south of the inner defensive system. This
outer double wall was limited to the protection of the old city.

The total population of Babylon at the time of Nebuchadnezzar is not
certainly known, but there are various pointers to assist in making an
intelligent guess. The area of the city within the inner walls was
about one and two-thirds square miles or slightly more than 1000 acres.
On the basis of populations of more recent Oriental cities, which have
generally been found to be between 150 and 200 to the acre, this would
indicate a population of up to 200,000. Such a figure would be of the
right order to fit in reasonably well with the Biblical passage (Jonah
iv I 1) which estimates the population of Nineveh, a comparable
capital, at 120,000. Another pointer is the statement of one of the
classical writers that Babylon could lodge 200,000 men for defence, an
estimate presumably based on the known population in normal times. Such
populations meant that there was no urban sprawl, and densely inhabited
though parts of particular cities may have been, all were set in the
midst of open country. City dwellers were still not divorced from the
countryside and from acquaintance with animals of the wild, and we have
(though not specifically from Babylon) reference to a gazelle,
notoriously a timid creature, coming right up to the city gate.
Elsewhere there is mention of a wild bull joining the domestic herd.

The population of Babylon was a very mixed one, both racially and
socially. As to race, Nebuchadnezzar impressed labour gangs for his
public works in Babylon from the whole of his Empire. Many of these
were no doubt only too glad to return to their native lands when their
task was over, but others certainly stayed for good in Babylon, either
settling down with wives who had followed them from their homeland or
marrying local women. Such foreign settlers were no more than the most
recent importation of foreign blood. There were many other peoples who
during the preceding centuries had been in the city, whether as
conquerors, captives or just visitors, long enough to interbreed with
Babylonian ladies. Amongst these were Hurrians, Cassites, Hittites,
Elamites, an occasional Egyptian, Aramaeans, Assyrians, Chaldaeans,
and, in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar himself, Jews. Babylon was a
thoroughly mongrel city.

Socially there were two great
divisions in the city, which to some extent cut across each other. One
division was between free men and slaves, the other between temple
personnel and laity. The temple personnel, who included people ranging
from the lowest grade of slaves to high-ranking priests who could
challenge the actions of the King himself, formed almost a State within
a State. The temple of Esagila owned, and its officials administered,
huge estates. Taken as a whole, the temples of Babylonia at this time
probably owned at least half the total land of the country, and played
a major part in the control of the national economy. The agents of the
temple were responsible for a good deal of the external trade of
Babylonia. From Babylon such men might travel to Syria to buy olive oil
or timber, or to Asia Minor for alum and gall-nuts for dyeing, or for
metal ores. Payment by the temples would be in the form of wool or
barley. The goods bought from Syria or Asia Minor would be carried on
pack-asses as far as the Euphrates, and then shipped direct to Babylon.
Trade was also conducted between Esagila and the temples of other
Babylonian cities, mainly by river, the ships used being in some cases
owned by the temples and in others hired from private owners: their
maximum capacity at this time seems to have been about sixty tons.

Some of the farms belonging to Esagila were let out to farmers who
paid rent in the form of a share of the produce, whilst others were
worked by the temple's own slaves. It was on the farms that the
majority of the temple slaves were employed, as agricultural labourers
engaged in the seasonal round of ploughing, sowing, reaping and
threshing, as herdsmen to tend the temple flocks and herds, as fowlers
and fishermen, or as blacksmiths and carpenters to repair the ploughs
and other equipment. Above all, there were gangs, both of temple slaves
and hired labourers, who worked in the unceasing effort to keep the
canals in good repair for irrigation and shipping.

Amongst personnel not belonging to the temple, the lowest category
from the legal point of view was of course the slave, though the
standard of living of a slave in a wealthy household might be a good
deal higher than that of a poor free man. Whether the lot of a
particular private slave was better or worse than that of his
counterpart in temple ownership obviously depended upon the personal
relationship between slave and master. Some masters were undoubtedly
very hard men, who made their unfortunate slaves so desperate that they
ran away. On the other hand, with an easy-going master, an ungrateful
slave might become lazy, indolent and unmanageable, and we hear of one
aging couple who had to take measures to bring a slave, presumably of
this kind, under the control of the temple-slave administration.

The duties of male private slaves mainly involved manual labour, and
would depend to some extent upon the trade or craft of the owner. A
female slave, when young, would probably act not only as a maid to the
lady of the house but also as a concubine of either the master of the
house or one of the teenage sons. Any children born to the slave-girl
would become slaves unless the head of the family formally accepted
them as his own children, which would probably only happen
if his wife were childless. When the slave-girl grew old and ugly, she
would come in for such duties as grinding the corn, drawing the water,
and so on. The average household at the time of Nebuchadnezzar had two
or three slaves, though of course an average does not tell the whole
story: wealthy families might own considerably more and poor families
none. We do find some wealthy families owning a hundred or more slaves,
but most of these would have been used on the land or in workshops and
would not have been included in the household.

Free men might engage in a wide range of crafts or professions,
though this is not the same as saying that any particular man had a
wide choice of craft or profession. The hereditary principle was very
strong, and the chances were very much that a man would follow in his
father's footsteps. Amongst the crafts and professions we find
mentioned in the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar are matmakers, weavers,
stone-masons, laundryman, goldsmiths, fishermen, boatmen,
leather-workers and shoemakers, confectioners, bakers, brewers,
oil-pressers, brickmakers, blacksmiths and coppersmiths, millers,
fowlers, carpenters, canal-diggers, and sheep-shearers, to mention but
a few.

Training for such crafts and professions was mainly by
apprenticeship, either to a private master-craftsman or with a guild.
Formal education was probably available in association with the temples
for those wishing to enter the learned professions based on scribal
craft, but we know little or nothing of the details of this at this
period.

At the apex of society was the royal court and the King,
Nebuchadnezzar himself. Nebuchadnezzar is most famous as a brilliant
strategist and general, but nothing will be said here about his army or
his military activities, as the details would be too similar to those
of the Assyrian army discussed in Chapter V. Besides being a great
soldier, Nebuchadnezzar was a great builder, and most of the palaces,
temples, fortifications and canals of Babylon were restored during his
reign.

Nebuchadnezzar's courtiers mainly
comprised provincial governors, army commanders, diplomatists, foreign
princes held as hostages, and members of the King's family and of other
branches of the blood royal. Officials specifically mentioned as being
at Nebuchadnezzar's Court included (to give literal translations of
their titles) the Chief Baker, the Chief of the Military Contingents
(i.e. the Commander-in-Chief), the Man over the Palace (i.e. the Lord
Chamberlain), the Secretary of the Crown Prince, and the Representative
for the Harem. Unless human nature has radically changed, this
last-mentioned official must have been a eunuch; possibly some of the
other officials were too.

The general layout of Nebuchadnezzar's principal palace has already
been mentioned, and the way of life in it was probably not markedly
different from that at Mari 1200 years before. We may therefore leave
the palace and turn to see how the ordinary Babylonian free man lived
at this time. We may consider first the kind of house he lived in.

One must not expect a private house in ancient Babylon to be
basically similar to a house in a modern English or American suburb. In
building a house, the Babylonian had two objects in view. He wanted
privacy, particularly in respect to his womenfolk, and he wanted a
refuge from the burning Babylonian sun. The privacy he obtained by
having the outer walls of the house almost blank and by arranging for
the rooms to open only on to a central courtyard. The protection
against the sun he obtained by making the walls of his house of mud
brick, up to 6 feet thick. This may seem to be excessively massive, but
those who have lived in Baghdad in houses built to flimsy European
standards instead of traditional Mesopotamian ones know how ineffective
walls of normal thickness are against the sun there, if electrical
air-conditioning happens to break down.

In thinking of a Babylonian private
house we have to imagine a central courtyard with groups of rooms
leading off on every side (97). The largest room was always the one
immediately to the south of the courtyard. There was nothing symbolic
about this: the point was simply that the principal living-room had to
have its entrance (which of course had to be from the courtyard and not
from the street) facing north, away from the sun. The size of such a
room ranged from about 18 feet by 8 in the smallest houses to 45 feet
by 17 in the largest. Usually this large room also had doorways in its
three other walls. These led to a series of subsidiary rooms along the
back and sides of the main room, in three non-connected suites. Smaller
houses might, of course, be without some of these subsidiary rooms,
whilst bigger houses, on the other hand, might have more than one
courtyard, each with corresponding groups of rooms around it. Big
houses of this kind were obviously the property of wealthy people, and
the additional courtyards, with the rooms around them, probably served
as houses for married sons.

The surface of courtyards and the floors of rooms would usually be
of burnt brick, sometimes finished off with a layer of a composition of
bitumen and powdered limestone. This must have been very similar to
some of the flooring finishes used in post-war houses, though more
durable, as some of it is still sound after 2500 years. It is likely
that in the wealthier houses the floors were covered with woollen rugs,
though in poorer houses some of the floors were simply of trodden earth
covered with no mor6 than reed mats. The ceilings, probably
whitewashed, as the walls certainly were, were of rafters of palm-wood,
overlaid with reed matting, on the top of which, for insulation against
the sun, there was a thick layer of mud. High in the walls of rooms, on
the courtyard side where possible, but sometimes necessarily facing on
to the street, were small ventilation openings, covered with terracotta
grids(98) to keep out vermin as far as that was possible. This device
was not always successful, and a Babylonian might wake up in the night
to find that a snake had fallen on to his bed, having crept in through
the ventilator shaft and crawled along the rafters.

According to the Greek traveller Herodotus, writing about a century
after Nebuchadnezzar, many of the houses in Babylon were of three or
four storeys. If this, or anything approaching it, was true of the time
of Nebuchadnezzar, then the upper storeys may possibly have consisted
of light timber structures, perhaps to ensure privacy to members of the
household sleeping on the roof in the summer. There is no
archaeological evidence of stairs to upper storeys, but this does not
prove there were no upper storeys, as stairs could well have been made
of wood, which is far less likely to leave traces than stone or brick.

Whatever the form of the upper
storeys, if any, the roofings of the house would certainly be mainly of
horizontal timbers covered with a thick layer of mud. Flat mud roofs of
this kind needed some sort of protection against rain, since although
rainfall at Babylon amounts to only five inches a year, it all comes in
one short season and frequently in two or three periods of very heavy
rain. Thus it was necessary to get the water away from the flat roofs
and the footings of the mud brick walls before it could do serious
damage. For this purpose there were pottery drains, fixed vertically in
the walls. These carried the water off from the roof down to street
level, where it ran into a soakaway or sump consisting of a kind of pit
lined with terracotta rings. This was also the normal means at Babylon
of disposal of waste water from kitchen, bathroom and lavatory, though
elsewhere in Mesopotamia, a good deal earlier, there had been some main
drainage systems.

The outer walls of a private house were
usually, except for an occasional ventilation grid and the outer door,
unbroken and, as far as the general plan was concerned, quite straight.
However, the monotony was often relieved by the walls being given what
can best be described as a 'saw-toothed' form. That is to say, the
outline would often be like this:

The brilliant sunlight of Babylon
would thus produce on the blank buff-coloured or whitewashed walls
alternate contrasting bands of light and shade. The street door (there
would only be one) was framed in a vaulted archway in the wall,
somewhere in the northern part of the house. Just inside the house from
the street door there was a very small room for the door-keeper, who
would of course be a slave, though a reliable and trusted one, as the
security of the house depended on his vigilance. The person entering a
private house had to be admitted by the door-keeper and then pass
through at least two rooms before he reached the courtyard, which was
of course the only means of approach to the main living-room in the
south of the building. The Babylonians obviously liked domestic
privacy, and the doors of the rooms leading from the street doorway
were always so arranged that even with the outer door open it was
impossible to peep into the courtyard from the street. Even more than
for the Englishman, the Babylonian's home was his castle.

The particular purpose of many of the rooms in a Babylonian house is
a matter for intelligent guessing, though with some of them the
presence of particular equipment or architectural features settles the
matter. One group of rooms to the north of the courtyard usually
contained the kitchen, pantries, and probably the slaves' quarters. The
kitchen, one of the larger rooms, would have in one corner the cooking
hearth, consisting of two brick platforms six inches or so apart at the
bottom and sloping together to a narrow slit at the top, where pots and
pans could be placed(]00). For people who could afford it, the fuel
used in such a hearth was mainly charcoal, generally from palm-wood, as
no other, wood was easily available for common use.

In the neighbourhood of the kitchen there were a number of large
pottery jars for the storage of water, which was brought up from the
river by the household slaves. These particular jars ' were unglazed,
since it was a great advantage to have them slightly porous, so that
the slight consequent evaporation would keep the water refreshingly
cool. Similar jars, often lined with a coating
of bitumen, were used for other kitchen stores such as barley, wheat
and oil. The Babylonians liked stale beer and wine as little as we do,
and these were kept in sealed jars. Kitchen utensils included such
things as basins, bowls, sieves and cups, all made of terracotta,
sometimes left in their yellowish buff colour, sometimes glazed in
blue, white or yellow (101). There were also terracotta chests for the
rat-proof storage of various foods. Equipment would usually include
mortars of baked clay or stone, used for pounding spices, a stone
handmill for grinding the wheat or barley, and of course knives.

At the south end of the house one of
the rooms behind the principal chamber was a bathroom. In this the
floor, so built as to slope towards the centre, consisted of baked
bricks overlaid with the usual composition of bitumen and powdered
limestone, whilst the lower parts of the walls were also lined with
baked brick. Beneath the lowest part of the floor in the centre of the
room was a soakaway or sump of the type already described, into which
the waste water from the bathroom flowed. According to the
archaeologists who excavated Babylon, no traces of bath-tubs are found
from the period of Nebuchadnezzar. This seems odd, since they were
certainly used in other parts of Mesopotamia, earlier, but possibly the
typical Babylonian was content simply to take a shower by having a
slave pour water over him, whilst he washed himself down with a kind of
soap made of the ashes. of certain plants mixed with fats.

The other rooms behind the main
chamber and to its sides were probably the family bedrooms. The beds in
them would be of wood, without headboards or footboards, very much like
a divan on short legs, with the horizontal part apparently of reed
matting.

The beds were usually put with the
head against a wall, with a free space on both sides. Inside the
bedrooms there were probably also chests in which clothes could be
stored. These chests were often made of terracotta, though wealthier
people might have had them made of wood.

In the main room it seems likely that there were, at least in the
wealthier houses, rugs on the floor. There would be a table, and
probably five or six wooden chairs with rush seats, since it was not
the Babylonian idea of comfort to squat on the floor for meals or
everyday tasks (103-4). Poorer people might sit on low pottery stools.
Artificial light, when necessary, was provided at this time by small
lamps with a wick, using olive oil as the fuel (102).

Babylonians who could afford it had four meals a day, a substantial
breakfast, a light lunch, and a heavy meal and a light snack again in
the evening. A meal began with a slave pouring water
over the hands of those dining, into a basin beneath. The family group
then sat round the table, and the head of the family said a grace
calling upon certain gods. The food was then placed on the table,
mainly in one large vessel, from which everyone helped himself,
generally using fingers, though knives, forks and spoons were not
unknown in ancient Babylonia. Largely the meal consisted of vegetable
products. Beef, mutton and goat-meat were regular items of the diet of
the gods, and also (contrary to the statement of some other books) of
those Babylonians who could afford it, though the poorer people may
seldom have eaten red meat, except at religious festivals. Pig-meat was
taboo to all the gods, but humans still ate it, and since pigs wandered
about the streets semi-wild as scavengers, poor people probably had the
chance of eating pork much more often than they did beef. The Euphrates
abounded (and still does) with fish of various edible species, some of
them reaching a weight of 200 pounds, and we know there were
professional fishermen at this time, so that we may conclude that fish
was a common item of diet and, of course, a valuable source of
protein(105). Of poultry and game, ducks, geese, pigeons and partridges
had always been available, and the hen had been introduced a century or
so before Nebuchadnezzar, so that it was probably quite common by this
time. The fish may have been split open and grilled over a charcoal
fire, whilst the meat and poultry were generally boiled in a pot to
make a stew.

The meat, fish and poultry have been mentioned first, but they
formed, of course, except in the diet of the rich, only the luxury
items. The main part of most meals, and the whole of many meals for
poor people, consisted of vegetable products. The main source of
carbohydrate was barley bread, made by slapping lumps of unleavened
dough on to the inside of a large pot heated in a fire to form a
primitive oven. A method which is basically the same as the Babylonian
one is still used in Iraq, and it produces a slab of bread, very
appetising when fresh, which looks rather like a pancake cooked crisp.
Coarse barley meal was also cooked with water to produce a kind of
porridge or gruel. Various puddings and cakes were made with a basis of
such ingredients as flour, olive oil or sesame oil, date-syrup, and
lard. Date-syrup was date juice pressed out and allowed to evaporate to
a semi-solid consistency; this, and dates in other forms, adequately
took the place of the prepared sugar in our diet. Honey from bees was
known, and the honey-bee had in fact been domesticated in Mesopotamia
for several centuries by the time of Nebuchadnezzar, but the honey from
bees was still of less economic importance than their wax. Amongst
fruit and vegetables eaten may be mentioned onions, garlic, gherkins of
various kinds, peas and beans, lettuces, radishes, pomegranates, figs,
grapes, and apricots.

The main drink was beer, though cold water was by no means despised.
Beer was available in many different varieties, depending upon the
method of preparation and the particular herbs used to flavour it.
Alcoholic beverages were also made from dates. Wine made from grapes
had long been known, but it was more expensive than date-wine, as the
better qualities of it had to be imported from cooler climates. A
letter of this period contains a complaint about a consignment of wine
which had been sent in a ship normally used for carrying bitumen; the
stench of the bitumen had apparently tainted the wine.

After a meal the diners wiped their mouths on table-napkins, and the
slaves again poured water over their hands. If it was the midday meal,
the diners would then go to their bedrooms for a siesta, which was very
necessary, since for much of the year the heat is intolerable in Iraq
during the early afternoon: this was so commonly accepted that one of
the Babylonian words for midday meant in fact 'the time of lying down'.

Herodotus gives us a detailed description of the clothing of a
Babylonian about a century after Nebuchadnezzar, but fashions must have
changed, since this description does not altogether fit with what we
see on monuments of the time of that King. Herodotus says that
Babylonian men used perfumes, and although we have nothing to give
direct confirmation of this for the time of Nebuchadnezzar, there are
certainly plenty of recipes for perfume-making known from Assyria from
a rather earlier period. The use of scent by Babylonian men did not, of
course, imply that they were perverts: it probably arose from the fact
that with pigs and dogs serving as the only garbage-removers the
atmosphere of the streets must have been a little trying to fastidious
nostrils on a muggy day.

How did an average Babylonian actually spend his day? There are of
course many details we do not know, but it is possible to put together
a general outline in which all the individual facts are authentic. Let
us consider a certain Bel-ibni, who was, we may suppose, a skilled
goldsmith. Bel-ibni and his wife woke up just before dawn, kissed each
other and the children, and then went for a bath, which they completed
by rubbing themselves down with olive oil and perfumes. The wife then
superintended the slaves in the production of breakfast, whilst
Bel-ibni and the boys of the family went on to the roof to prostrate
themselves before the rising sun. After breakfast Bel-ibni went along
to a small temple near by, taking, for an offering due from him, a lamb
which he had bought the previous day and which had been tied up in the
courtyard all night. As he entered the temple courtyard he saw a
disturbance going on: a man had just been arrested by the temple guards
for attempting to approach a certain part of the temple without
performing the appropriate ceremonial. Bel-ibni handed over his lamb to
a temple official, whose scribe quickly drew up a receipt on a small
clay tablet, at the same time entering a note of the source of the lamb
on a much larger tablet destined for the temple's annual records. This
duty done, Bel-ibni then made his way towards the great city-temple
Esagila, passing near the river embankment, where he stopped for a
moment to watch the bustle of the shipping. At the quay. serving
Esagila a foreign ship which had come up from the Persian Gulf was
unloading a cargo of ingots of copper; a smaller vessel which had
brought a load of alum down from Carchemish was waiting its turn, and
another one was being loaded with sesame destined for the temple of one
of the cities downstream from Babylon. Leaving the riverside, Bel-ibni
made his way to one of the offices within the precincts of Esagila,
where the appropriate authorities issued him with a quantity of gold,
giving him instructions to make rings and bangles for the adornment of
a new statue of Marduk. He was also given a much smaller sum in the
form of a strip of silver, which represented payment in advance for his
work. Here again, tablets were drawn up, specifying the weights of gold
and silver paid to the goldsmith and the work to be done. Bel-ibni now
made his way to the goldsmiths' bazaar, stopping on the way at the
house of a merchant to buy a gur sack (about four bushels) of barley,
for which he snipped off and weighed out a piece from his strip of
silver; the merchant sent off a slave with the corn to Bel-ibni's
house.

As Bel-ibni's day had begun at about five a.m. by our time, it was
now still before eight. At his workshop in the goldsmiths' bazaar,
Bel-ibni found his oldest son Kudda awaiting him, with the charcoal
brazier used for melting the metal already blown into life with
bellows. Bel-ibni and his son whispered a short traditional incantation
in the name of the patron-god of the goldsmiths, and then placed the
gold in a terracotta crucible, and moved the crucible gradually into
the hottest part of the charcoal. Bel-ibni's son applied himself, as
his father had taught him, to the blowpipe, and soon had the charcoal
around the crucible at a white heat. Bel-ibni had meanwhile
taken the appropriate moulds from the terracotta box in which he kept
his stock-in-trade, and had set these up in a bowl of sand and put the
whole lot to heat up, so that the molten metal should not crack the
moulds. Finally the gold in the crucible melted, and Bel-ibni took
tongs and lifted out the crucible, pouring its molten contents
carefully into the moulds. The gold was given time to set and cool off,
and the ornaments were then withdrawn from their moulds. With the aid
of files, chisels, punches and light hammers, gold and silver wire,
solder and heat judiciously applied with the blowpipe, Bel-ibni and his
son converted the plain castings into fine examples of Babylonian
embossed and engraved ornamentation and filigree work.

They worked on with only an occasional pause, as when they stopped
to listen to a crier announcing the details of a runaway slave, or the
laments of the womenfolk announced a death in a dwelling near by. When
the heat and height of the sun told them that midday was near, Bel-ibni
and Kudda packed away their tools and moulds in the tool-chest,
carefully banked up the brazier with charcoal and damped it down,
probably with a coating of clay' until it was only just smouldering and
would remain alight until the evening. They could probably always
borrow fire from a neighbour if their brazier did go out, but to do
this too often would give a man a bad name for improvidence.

Bel-ibni and Kudda were now able to return home, taking with them
for safety the completed ornaments and any scraps of gold left over,
for which they would have to account to the temple authorities. On the
way home they passed a temple, in the courtyard of which a group of
their neighbours was sitting, listening to the details of a lawsuit
brought by one man against another about the ownership of a plot of
land between their houses. Old men who remembered the fathers of the
litigants were just giving evidence of transactions concerning that
piece of land supposed to have happened a generation before. In a
corner of the courtyard a man sat whimpering in pain whilst a friend
bathed with oil a great red weal on his forehead: the man had been
found out in forging a clay tablet about a property deal, and his
punishment had been to have the tablet heated in a brazier and branded
into his forehead.

Bel-ibni and Kudda arrived home to find Bel-ibni's wife in some
excitement. The new slave-girl, whom Bel-ibni had only bought a
fortnight before, had had an epileptic fit during the morning. This was
annoying, as Bel-ibni had thought she was a promising girl as concubine
for Kudda, who was fourteen and just becoming interested in such
things, but there was no financial loss involved, since the girl
carried a three-month guarantee against such symptoms and Bel-ibni had
only to return her to get his money back.

Bel-ibni and his wife, Kudda and the younger son and daughter, now
had their light lunch around the table in the main room, as already
described. Afterwards Bel-ibni and his wife went to their bedroom for
the siesta. The heat outside was now intolerable, but within the
massive walls of the rooms, with their thick mud roofs and small
ventilation openings, the temperature remained quite comfortable. Tired
after the work and heat of the morning, Belibni and his wife soon fell
asleep. They awoke refreshed and made love: this was not only a
pleasure but also a positive duty. Bel-ibni's wife was five months
pregnant, and the omen collections stated that this was a highly
favourable time for this activity.

Bel-ibni now had another bath, and with Kudda returned for further
work in the goldsmiths' bazaar. At dusk they returned home for the main
evening meal. Tonight there was a minor festival at the local temple,
and so after the meal all the members of the family put on their best
clothing, arranged their hair-styles with special care, and went along
to join in the festivities. There seems to be no proof that at this
period Bel-ibni's wife would have had to be veiled in public, although
at earlier periods of Babylonian and Assyrian history this was
certainly usual.

The temple courtyard flickered in the light of torches made of reeds
soaked in crude bitumen, and there was a great throng of people, most
of them neighbours known to Bel-ibni, dancing and singing. In the
entrance to the main shrine at one side of the courtyard the priests
inspected a bull with its legs tied, all ready for slaughter. Silence
fell as they began intoning a long series of ritual texts, many of them
quite unintelligible to anyone listening, since they were in the dead
language Sumerian. The sense of the ritual was none the less not lost
on the crowd, for a group of masked priests performed a series of
symbolic fights and dances reflecting the mythological allusions
contained in the words of the ritual. As one of the actors fell to the
ground in mimic death the crowd would break out in lamentation, or when
a god was seen to overcome the evil powers opposing him the watchers
broke into cries of joy.

When the festival was at an end, or when Bel-ibni had seen enough,
the family returned home again. The slaves had already placed torches
in the courtyard and lighted lamps at the entrance of the house and in
the main room. Whilst Bel-ibni's wife gave the slaves instructions for
the next day's household work, Bel-ibni played with his little daughter
and watched his two sons entertaining themselves at a kind of draughts
(the rules of which we do not know). A light supper brought the day to
an end.

Chapter IX

RELIGION

IN modern life some people do not recognise the claims of religion
at all, whilst some who do accept religion as having a claim on them
tend to isolate it as a separate compartment of their lives. These
attitudes would have been unthinkable in the ancient world. To ancient
man religion was not an optional extra, but rather was the aspect of
existence which formed the basis of the whole of life.

In the modern world we try to make clear-cut distinctions between
the various categories of fortune-telling, magic, religion, theology,
and ethics. Such distinctions are not always easy to maintain even in
the modern world, and in ancient times would have been almost
meaningless. In the ancient world all these elements were parts of one
great whole. It is this whole, not strictly divided into our own
categories, to which it is hoped to give some brief introduction here.

Ancient religion, despite the conservatism which was a marked
feature of it, did in the course of time undergo changes of emphasis
and even of belief and practice. Also, the religion of Assyria was not
identical at all points with the religion of Babylonia. For these
reasons it is advisable, in discussing ancient Mesopotamian religion,
to choose a particular period and place. In what follows most of the
statements are based on evidence from Assyria at about 700 B.C., though
some evidence from Babylonia and from other periods is included to fill
out the picture.

It is necessary to make clear at the
outset what it is we are discussing. Apart from a few comments by
travellers such as Herodotus (fifth century B.C.), we know nothing of
what went on in Babylonian and Assyrian religion except what we find in
the cuneiform texts and what we can infer from the architecture of the
temples. The cuneiform texts were mostly drawn up and used by
particular classes of learned priests, and so for the greatest part are
concerned only with official religion. Only by chance do such texts
occasionally give some hint about how religious observances affected
ordinary people. It is true that the very common magical texts for
driving away demons (see below, pp. 104-6) do to some extent bridge the
gap between official and popular religion, but even so they only touch
the life of the ordinary man at the point at which he was suffering
from some particular trouble. Apart from this kind of thing we are very
much in the dark as to the religious attitudes of the ordinary
illiterate peasants of Babylonia and Assyria. Any picture we can
present is therefore likely to be very one-sided. Some conclusions can,
however, reasonably be drawn.

We should be wrong, in thinking of how religion affected the
ordinary Babylonian or Assyrian, to begin by analysing the list of gods
who were supposed to control the universe and its various compartments.
Gods there were, thousands of them, but the ordinary man was probably
actively concerned with only five or six of them at the most. These
would of course be the ones who helped him in his daily life,
particularly those who protected him from the attacks of demons, from
witchcraft, and from injustice a the hands of his fellow-men, or who
could warn him of impending dangers.

There was a great deal of superstition in the life of the ancient
people of Babylonia, as indeed there still is in the life of modern
people. However, one notable difference between superstition in the
ancient world and in our own times is that now it is condemned by
official religion. In the ancient world superstition, far from being
condemned by official religion, was a part of religion itself.

One of the most prominent aspects of ancient superstition was the
belief in demons. From the point of view of the average Assyrian or
Babylonian, there might be demons almost anywhere, though there were
some places and circumstances which they particularly favoured. They
were especially likely to be found in the desert, which was why the
desert was such a dangerous place to wander around in. Graveyards and
ruined buildings were other favoured lurking places. Demons were likely
to be particularly active when a woman was expecting or had just had a
child--hence, in the ancient way of thinking, the high rate of
child-bed fever and infant mortality. Most illnesses were put down to
their direct interference, and they were likely to try to take up
residence in a newly built house, to the harm and inconvenience of the
human owners. Not all spirits were ill-disposed: some served to protect
human beings, and the colossal bulls and lions which were placed
outside Assyrian palaces (4, 108) represented protecting spirits of
this kind.

The origin of the harmful demonic powers was of various kinds. Some
were said to have been 'spawned by the great god Anu', others had their
origin in the Underworld, and yet others were ghosts of human beings.
Some of the demons of divine origin were powerful enough to interfere
not only with human beings but even with the gods themselves, a notable
instance being at eclipses of the moon. A text relates that 'the seven
evil gods [a particular group of demons] forced their way into the
vault of heaven; they clustered angrily round the crescent of the
Moon-god'. In the particular text from which this comes, the gods
themselves dealt with the matter. In practice, however, men also had
their part to play when this happened, and they helped to drive off the
demons causing eclipses by means of a special sacred kettle-drum which
was set up in the temple courtyard and beaten. Such is human
conservatism that this ceremony still went on even after the
Babylonians knew what caused eclipses and could calculate them
accurately in advance.

The way in which demons manifested themselves and came to interfere
in human activities, and the manner in which their ill -effects could
be overcome, may be best shown by quoting a few texts out of many
possible examples.

Demons are frequently described as being seven in number:

Seven are they! In the mountains of the west were they born.

Seven are they! In the mountains of the east did they grow up.

In caves of the earth do they dwell,

In waste places of the earth do they suddenly appear.

ààààààààààà.......................................................

The seven of them go running over the mountains of the west,

The seven of them go dancing over the mountains of the east.

Another text describes the demons more exactly:

Amongst the seven of them, one is the south wind (in the form of) a
dragon,

The second is a dragon with open mouth,

The third is a fierce leopard . .

The fourth is a great viper . . .,

The fifth is a raging lion whose spring cannot be avoided,

The sixth is [description lost],

The seventh is a whirlwind ...

This 'seven' represented simply one class of demons; there were
other species in addition to these. One of the nastiest demons was one
known as Lamashtu, a female who tried to steal newborn babies from
their mothers (109).

The demons could take all kinds of forms, as well as their own
proper shapes (110). They could lie down in the form of an ass to wait
for a man to approach, or run about the city at night in the shape of a
fox, or go around in packs like hounds, or slither along the ground
like snakes. Ordinary protective measures had little effect upon
demons, as they could creep into a house through a crack in the door or
blow in like a draught. They were capable of unbelievably swift
movement, and are described as flitting past like shooting stars.

It was not only demons who were likely to harm people. There were
also evilly disposed humans who, as witches or wizards, were capable of
inflicting sickness or misfortune upon a person by means of spells.
Fortunately, these evil powers, whether demonic or human, could
generally be overcome by magical means, and a whole class of
priest-magicians existed ready (for a fee) to provide their assistance.

The following is a fairly typical kind of text setting out what a
priest-magician (or mashmashu, as he was called in the Akkadian
language) was to do in the case of a particular type of sufferer. The
man concerned seems to have been troubled with what we might call a
serious neurosis, which gave him a feeling of being haunted and in bad
health. The text says:

If a ghost has seized a man and persecutes him, or a ... demon has
seized him, or an Evil Thing has grasped his hand and will not be
separated from him, you shall take dust from a ruined town, a ruined AK
house, a ruined temple, a grave, a neglected garden, a neglected canal,
and a disused road, and you shall mix it with bull's blood and make an
image of the Evil Thing.

You shall clothe it with a lion's skin, and thread a carnelian stone
and put it round its neck. You shall make it hold a leather bag, and
you shall supply it with provisions. . . . You shall make it stand on
the roof of the sick man's house. You shall ... pour out (a libation).
You shall set up three cedar-wood posts at its sides [to form a tripod
over it]. You shall surround it with a circle of flour.

Towards sunset you shall cover it with
a ... pot in which nothing has been cooked. [This was presumably
inverted over the tripod.] For three days the mashmashu shall . . . by
day set out an incense burner with gum-juniper before Shamash [the
Sun-god], by night heap up emmer flour before the stars of night.
Before Shamash and the stars he shall then, for three days, recite for
the sick man:

'Evil Thing, from this day from the body of So-and-so son of
So-and-so you are separated, cast forth.... and chased away. The god or
goddess who put you (there) has separated you from the body of
So-and-so the sick man.'

On the third day towards sunset you shall set up the offering
equipment before Shamash. The sick man shall raise the image before
Shamash and repeat thus:

Incantation: 'O Shamash, . . . judge
of heaven and earth.... who establishes light for the people; Shamash,
when you set, light is withdrawn from the people. . . . When you come
forth, all mankind becomes warm. The cattle and living things that go
out on the steppe-land, they come towards you, you give them life. You
judge the case of the wronged man and wronged woman; you give them a
just decision. 1, So-and-so son of So-and-so, kneel full of trouble,
because a curse binds me.... (because) shivering, dizziness, diseased
flesh, vertigo, arthritis, disordered mind have weighed me down, make
me moan every day.... Judge my case, give a decision for me, making a
decision (in my favour). . . .'

Thus you shall make him say. You shall put it [the image] in the pot
and you shall put it under a curse and say:

'You are accursed by the oath of the heavens, You are accursed by
the oath of Shamash.'

You shall (then) seal its mouth [i.e. the mouth of the pot].... and
you shall bury it in deserted wasteland.

There are various disputable features in this text but the main
principles seem clear. The demon interfering with the man was induced
to take up residence in the image made of dust and bull's blood, and
magical steps (in the form of the lion skin, the red jewel and the
magic circle of flour) were taken to ensure that it could not
afterwards escape. Demons were apparently immortal and could not be
actually destroyed, but they could be buried out of harm's way.

The tablet from which the foregoing text is taken contains several
other rituals, all with the same basic purpose though with different
details. One of these texts . gives away the fact that the mashmashu
was not always successful in his treatment, for it begins: 'If the hand
of an utukku-demon has seized a man, and the mashmashu is
unable to remove it ....!

A feature of Babylonian and Assyrian demons seems to have been their
unsuspecting nature and low intelligence. They could very easily be
tricked or deceived. They could, as we have seen, be trapped in a pot
or an image; alternatively, they could be induced to transfer their
attentions to an animal or an image or even a stick which by magical
means was substituted for the victim they had been plaguing.

Most of the foregoing has been concerned with demons properly
speaking, that is, beings of a special category between men and gods.
Technically distinct from these, but often much the same in their
practical effect, were the ghosts of dead humans. The proper place for
ghosts was, of course, the Underworld. The Underworld in ancient
Mesopotamian thought was not a very inviting conception (p. 112), but
at least the ghost of a person who was properly buried and who received
the proper grave offerings found repose there. The trouble arose with
ghosts of people who had died violent deaths, or whose bodies had not
received proper treatment after death. Such ghosts, full of malevolence
to living humans. could wander around and cause illness, nightmares, or
disorders of the mind, in much the same way as the demons. Many of the
exorcisms include ghosts alongside demons in the list of possible
causes of the trouble, though other rituals single out ghosts for
special treatment.

Not all ghosts were considered harmful to mankind. The ghost of a
person decently buried and properly provided with funerary offerings
was potentially well-disposed, and, being in touch with the authorities
of the Underworld, could usefully be invoked on behalf of his still
living kindred, as in the following extract from a long ritual:

You, the ghosts of my family....

As many as lie at rest in the (Under)world, I have made a funerary
offering to you;

I have poured out water for you; ...

Stand before Shamash and Gilgamesh today!

Judge my case! Decide the details of the decision about me!

The Bad Thing which is in my body, in my flesh, in my veins, Appoint
over to the hand of Namtar, Messenger of the (Under)world; ...

Seize him [i.e. the Bad Thing] and send him down to the Land of

No Return!

Let me, your servant, live, let me prosper.

Because of the magical rites let me be ritually clean in your name.
I will give cold water for your wraith to drink.

Give life to me that I may utter your praise.

Magical rituals like those referred to
above, though most common in connection with demons (or ghosts) and the
illnesses and misfortunes thought to have been caused by them, could
also be used in rather different circumstances. If for example a man
had the unpleasant experience of a dog cocking its leg against him (and
there have always been plenty of ill-mannered dogs around Oriental
cities), this was an omen of very bad misfortune in store. However,
just as with us, if a person spills salt, the misfortune this
supposedly foretells can be prevented by throwing some salt over the
shoulder, so with the dogs-oiled Babylonian gentleman, his coming
disaster could be prevented by the appropriate ritual. A text gives
full details as to what was to be done by a mashmashu to put things
right:

Ritual for it. You shall make a dog of clay. You shall put a piece
of cedar-wood at its neck. You shall pour oil on its head. You shall
coat it with goat-hair.... You shall make a bonfire for Shamash on the
bank of the river. You shall arrange twelve loaves of emmer bread . . .
[and other food and drink offerings].... You shall set up an incense
burner of gum-juniper. You shall pour a libation of best quality beer.
You shall make the man kneel down. You shall take up that image and say
thus:

Incantation: 'O Shamash, king of heaven and earth. . .

The incantation mentions the trouble and concludes:

'Set the evil of that dog far away,

That I may praise you!'

The instructions continue:

Thus it shall be said before Shamash. Over that image you shall say
thus:

'I give you as my substitute.

Let the evil destined for my body be upon you....

Let the evil before and behind me be upon you.'

When you have said this, you shall go away from Shamash and turn to
the river and say:

Incantation: 'This dog has sprinkled me with urine. I am afraid and
fearful. Let this evil not return to its place (on the earth).... let
it not be near.....

Incantation: 'Let that dog be far off in the Abyss.... Extract from
my body the evil (omen) of the dog; grant me to live happily.'

Thus you shall say three times. You shall throw that image into the
river. He [the man who met the dog] shall not look behind him. He shall
go to the tavern.

The text about the omen from the dog's misconduct illustrates one of
the great pseudo-religious preoccupations of the ancient people of
Mesopotamia. The course of events was believed to be in the hands of
the divine powers, and things happened because the gods had decided
that they should. If the gods already knew what was going to happen, it
was a reasonable assumption that in some circumstances they would give
a glimpse of future events to human beings. Out of this way of looking
at things there grew up a great pseudo-science devoted to the obtaining
and interpretation of omens.

From our point of view, a useful distinction can be made between
omens drawn from chance happenings, such as treading on a lizard, and
omens deliberately obtained by slaughtering a sheep to examine its
internal organs, particularly the liver. Artificially obtained omens
were especially favoured in State circles, in which connection their
use has been referred to elsewhere (pp. 30-31). Another form of
fortune-telling used particularly in State circles, which rivalled
liver-divination in antiquity and finally superseded it in popularity,
was astrology. At about the time and period with which we are mainly
concerned at present (700 B.C. in Assyria) reports were regularly made
to the King about the appearance of the moon and planets, with comments
upon what these things foretold. The application of astrology to
individuals, in the form in which (most regrettably) many of our own
newspapers and journals still pander to this superstition, had to await
the invention of the twelve signs of the zodiac, which took place in
Babylonia soon after 500 B.C.

One of the less artificial types of fortune-telling, in vogue not
only in ancient Mesopotamia but throughout the whole ancient Near East,
was divination by dreams. Everyone is familiar with the stories in the
Bible about dreams which Joseph had as a boy (Genesis xxxvii 5-10) and
those which later on he interpreted in Egypt (Genesis xl 5-19, xli
1-32). This kind of thing is very well known also from outside the
Bible, and there are several records of dreams of Egyptian, Hittite and
Mesopotamian kings, most of them quite transparent in meaning. There
are also 'Dream Books' written on cuneiform tablets, giving long lists
of dreams and their meanings.

There are other long compilations containing lists of omens drawn
from accidental occurrences, such as the birth of an abortion or
misshapen baby, or from random events of everyday life, such as an
unusual bird sitting on a housetop.

It is appropriate here to give some brief account of the nature of
some of the gods whose intentions the Babylonians and Assyrians were so
anxious to know. No attempt will be made to catalogue all the gods
whose names are known, since they run into thousands, most of them of
importance only in particular places or at particular periods or in
connection with particular activities.

At the head of the pantheon were three
great gods, Anu, Enlil and Ea (or Enki, to give him his original
Sumerian name). Anu was nominally king of the gods, but from early
Sumerian times he had become a rather shadowy figure, and was first
associated with, and afterwards in practice superseded by, Enlil.
Enlil, whose name is Sumerian for 'Lord Wind', was the Storm-god. He
represented the divine in its transcendent aspect, and though he could
be of gracious countenance, the human race crossed him only at their
peril. He could be as violent as the storm, and it was he who insisted
on the destruction of mankind by the Deluge (p. 48). Ea (Enki) on the
other hand, we might call the immanent aspect of deity. He was the god
of Wisdom and Magic and was invariably benign. It was he who had
established the world order and given mankind the gifts of
civilisation; he, too, had prevented the utter destruction of the human
race in the Deluge. He it was who was the ultimate source of magical
power against the 4emonic enemies of mankind.

Each of these three great gods had consorts, but none was, in the
period with which we are mainly concerned, more than a faint reflection
of her husband. Once one leaves the early Sumerian period, the only
prominent goddesses one finds are Ereshkigal, queen of the Underworld,
so powerful that all the gods were expected to stand up out of respect
to her messenger, and Inanna. Inanna, identified with the Semitic
goddess Ishtar, had her visible form as the planet Venus, the morning
and evening star. She came to absorb many attributes which may
originally have belonged to a number of other goddesses, but her major
aspects were those of goddess of love and of war. Cults of a sexual
nature were carried on in her honour in many places.

Ishtar, as the planet Venus, is often thought of in a group with
Sin, the Moon-god, and Shamash, the Sun-god (111). Because he saw
everything in his daily course above the earth, Shamash was also god of
justice. There was a strong moral element in the cult of Shamash, who
was an unsparing enemy of the wrongdoer and the oppressor, and a friend
of the just and the oppressed. A god often associated with Shamash was
Adad, another storm-god, originally of West Semitic origin.

Enlil had been regarded as the old national god of Sumer, and later
many of his attributes were taken over by the national gods of
Babylonia and Assyria, respectively Marduk (113) and Ashur, who played
the central part in the State cults of their respective countries.

A Babylonian god who in the later period rivalled Marduk in
importance was Nabu, son of Marduk, patron of the city of Borsippa near
Babylon, and god of the Scribal Art. Although it has been denied,
Marduk and Nabu both seem to have represented (amongst other things)
aspects of the Sun-god, Marduk as the sun during the daytime or during
the summer, Nabu as the sun at night or at midwinter. Because of this
association, an odd little ceremony took place in Babylon twice a year.
On midsummer's day, two minor goddesses (known elsewhere as the
hairdressers of Marduk's wife) went in solemn procession from Esagila,
the temple of Marduk, to Ezida, the temple of Nabu. At midwinter, when
the night was longest and about to shorten, the two goddesses went in
the reverse direction, from Nabu's temple to Marduk's. A cuneiform text
explains the purpose of this:

In the month of Tammuz [June], when the nights are short, in order
to lengthen the nights the daughters of Esagila go to Ezida. Ezida is
the Night House. In the month of Tebet [December], when the days are
short, the daughters of Ezida, in order to lengthen the days, go to
Esagila. Esagila is the Day House.

Two other major gods who should be mentioned were Ninurta and
Nergal. Ninurta, a son of Enlil, was a warrior god, and was
particularly reverenced in Assyria. Nergal was patron god of the
Babylonian city of Kutha. A myth relates how he became the husband of
Ereshkigal and so king of the Underworld; as such he was greatly
feared. Three other gods whose names quite frequently occur were Gibil,
Gira and Nusku, fire-gods who were invoked particularly in connection
with measures taken against witchcraft.

A god on a different level from all the foregoing was Tammuz,
originally a deified King of early Sumerian times. Lamentation for his
death was the central feature of a popular fertility cult which spread
widely in the Near East, even reaching Jerusalem (Ezekiel viii 14).
Some people have even gone so far as to suggest that Tammuz was a dying
god who rose again and who was in consequence the centre of a saviour
cult, but there is no evidence at all for this.

Both amongst the greater and the lesser deities, there was a
constant tendency to reduce their numbers by identifying one with
another. Thus a hymn to the goddess Bawa boldly stated that a number of
other goddesses were only aspects of Bawa:

In Ur, [she is] Ningal, sister of the great gods;

................................ààààààààà.....

In Sippar, city of ancient times.... she is Aya;

In Babylon.... she is Eru'a.

Those named were the principal deities commonly mentioned in the
first millennium B.C., but in addition to them there were hosts of
lesser ones, many of whom were patrons of various trades and
activities. Foreign gods were also recognised, for there was no narrow
exclusiveness in Assyro-Babylonian religious thought. Assyrian kings
referred to the gods of their vassals and even called upon them to
wreak vengeance upon those who failed to observe treaty obligations. We
find Esarhaddon, in his treaty with the vassal King of Tyre, expressing
the wish that in the event of default by the Tyrian,

Bethel and Anath-Bethel may deliver you into the power of a ravenous
lion.... Baal-sameme, Baal-matage, (and) Baal-zephon may make a foul
wind come upon your ships, and may loosen their structure and tear out
their masts, so that a great wave may sink them in the sea.

All the great gods were originally associated with particular
cities, where their cult was always specially held in honour. Thus ,Anu
was associated with Erech, Enlil with Nippur, Enki (Ea) with Eridu,
Inanna (alongside Anu) with Erech, Marduk with Babylon, and so on. The
cult of a god was not limited to his own city, and there were temples
or chapels of many different gods in every great city. At festivals,
the images of the gods might leave their temples to visit the shrines
of other deities. This is well attested for the New Year Festival.

The New Year Festival, the principal religious event of the year
throughout Babylonia and Assyria, still presents us with many problems.
Our knowledge of it has to be pieced together from evidence relating to
several different periods and places, and is still far from complete.
In Babylon the festival took place during the first eleven days of the
first month, Nisan. The calendar, which was basically lunar, was if
necessary adjusted by the insertion of an extra month (p. 31) so that
the spring equinox would fall during the New Year Festival.

During the first five days of the festival various ceremonies of
purification and preparation were performed. These culminated in the
High Priest taking the King in before Marduk, to whom he surrendered
his royal insignia. The King received a blow in the face from the High
Priest, and was forced to his knees, where he uttered a formula
claiming to have been innocent of various offences against Marduk's
city. His insignia were then restored to him. On the sixth day the
image of the god Nabu arrived from the city of Borsippa, about ten
miles away, and entered Esagila, the temple of his father Marduk. The
details of what Marduk and Nabu did during the following days we do not
know: in general terms it is likely that they were engaged in decreeing
the fate of the city for the following year. There may also have taken
place at this time a sacred marriage between the King and a high
priestess, representing deities.

The climax of the festival took place on the tenth day. The statues
of Marduk, Nabu, and other gods, dressed in sacred garments adorned in
gold, assembled in the great courtyard of Esagila, while the people of
the city looked on in awed excitement. The procession was then led by
the King himself, partly along the roads and partly by barge on the
canals, to a building known as the Akitu House. This was a chapel set
in the midst of gardens outside the city proper. In the Akitu House
some kind of ritual (of which the details are unknown) took place, in
which Marduk had a symbolic battle with the monsters representing the
forces of chaos. After his victory Marduk and his procession were taken
back to the city in triumph, the populace shouting over and over again
their ritual cries of joy.

There were lesser festivals at many other times during the year, and
to ensure the due performance of the cult of the gods each temple had
its own staff of religious personnel, both male and female. There were
priests of various classes, from the High Priest downwards, to perform
sacrifices and other rituals in which the gods were directly
approached. Another group of personnel comprised administrators to look
after temple property and ensure the provision of all
the material equipment necessary for the cult. Other functionaries
included various classes of diviners and exorcists, as well as
officiants such as sword-bearers (for slaughtering sacrificial
animals), and carpenters and jewellers for making statues or figurines
used in certain ceremonies. There were also musicians (114) and
singers, both male and female. All the men amongst the above-mentioned
groups were normally married, and exercised their offices in the temple
as an hereditary right, at least in the late period (after 500 B.C.). A
share of the temple revenues went with each office and, in the period
mentioned, the right to exercise an office in the temple and to enjoy
the income from it could be freely bought and sold. This, however, was
in the period when Babylonian religion was a spent force: earlier, when
it had been in its full vigour, the sale of offices in the temple must
have been far less usual, as unsuitable birth or any physical blemish
disqualified a person from exercising any such office. Also, in the
earlier period, some offices in the temples were certainly royal
appointments.

A word should be said about another
group of temple personnel. These were the religious prostitutes, not
only women but also men who had been made eunuchs. Ishtar was, as we
have said, the goddess of love, and the sexual practices in which these
people were concerned were principally in her honour. There is good
reason to think that similar practices were at one period carried on in
the temple built by Solomon in Jerusalem, though there it met with
vigorous opposition from the followers of Yahweh. In Babylonia and
Assyria such practices involved no stigma, and it seems that a lady
whose duties lay in this sphere might be respectably married.

If the foregoing seems to put the religion of the average Babylonian
or Assyrian at a very crude and low level, it is probably not doing the
average Babylonian or Assyrian a great injustice. His religion, in many
of its features, was low and crude, and we find Isaiah viewing it with
amused contempt. None the less, there was a nobler side to it, even if
this is not so readily evident. Embedded within some of the magical
ritual texts there were prayers to some of the great gods, and although
these are labelled 'incantations', so that there must have been some
feeling that they operated simply as magical forms of words, their
spirit is nobler than this would suggest. Some of them have a definite
ethical content, since the god is sometimes described as judging the
case of the wronged man or wronged woman. This higher side of religion
becomes particularly apparent when we turn to some of the hymns to the
great gods. Thus a Babylonian hymn to Shamash refers at length both to
the beneficence of the Sun-god and to the moral standards set by him.
The worshipper says to the god:

You take care of all the people of the lands;

Everything that Ea, the king, the counsellor, has brought into being
is wholly entrusted to you.

Whatever has breath, you shepherd equally; You are their keeper,
above and below.

As a definite statement of the Sun-god's ethical standards the
worshipper says in the same hymn:

You give the crooked judge experience of prison;

The person who perverts justice for a bribe, you make to bear

punishment.

He who does not accept a bribe but takes the part of the weak Is
pleasing to Shamash, who will give him long life.

Hymns and prayers of this kind, as well as other texts, show that,
as we have said, Babylonian religion had a definite ethical content.
Although a Babylonian cynic might express the view that

What (seems) proper to oneself is an offence to a god,

What (seems) despicable in one's own heart is proper to one's god,

the ordinary belief was that there were certain forms of action
obviously pleasing to the gods, and others displeasing and liable to
incur the gods' wrath.

How were the beliefs of ancient man reflected in his general
attitude to life? It is usually said that the ancient Mesopotamian's
view of life was essentially pessimistic, by which is meant that the
prevalent view was one which regarded human existence as ultimately
futile. Although some gods, particularly Shamash, appeared to be
motivated by considerations of ethical justice, the ancient myths
mostly appeared to teach that the life of man was decided not by
righteous gods bound by their own moral laws, but by the arbitrary
interplay of the uncertain tempers of the leaders of the pantheon. If
the Babylonian or Assyrian saw only futility in his life on earth, he
had no compensating hope of a better state beyond the grave, for the
Underworld was a place of gloom and dust. It was commonly accepted that
mankind had been created for no other purpose than to act as servants
for the gods, and therefore there was no reason for an individual man
to expect to be of significance in either this world or the next. This
attitude was undoubtedly strongly embedded in Mesopotamian thought, but
it has been pointed out that this belief about the purpose of man had
another side to it. Certainly mankind was, in the Assyro-Babylonian
view, merely created to do the service of the gods, but conversely the
gods needed the service of mankind in order to continue to exist in the
accustomed divine order. In the last resort, the well-being of the gods
in heaven, and the maintenance of the created universe, depended upon
human society on earth. The individual human had no purpose and no
destiny, but the world was unthinkable without the human race.

Bibliography

Chapter I

A. H. LAYARD, Nineveh and its remains, vol. i and chapters
XI-XIV in vol. it (John Murray 1849) [Though published over a century
ago, copies of this work still frequently appear second-hand. There are
useful abridged one-volume editions, with the same title, published
between 1851 and 18671

The reader who wishes to keep in touch with current developments in
the subject may be recommended to become a subscriber to Iraq
(published twice yearly), the journal of the British School of
Archaeology in Iraq, 31-34 Gordon Square, W.C.I. This costs L2 5s. per
annum, and entitles the subscriber not only to the journal but also to
attendance at the Annual General Meeting, which takes the form of an
excellent tea followed by an illustrated lecture by the Director of the
School's current excavations.

University entrants in Great Britain interested in taking up
Assyriology as a career will find the subject catered for at the
universities of Oxford and Cambridge and at the School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London, W.C.I.

FOOTNOTES

1 During part of his life Layard used his Christian names
in the order Austen Henry, out of respect to his uncle, a Mr Austen.

2 All the following
examples
of royal responsibility are taken from documents of the period under
discussion, but a few of them actually occur in relation to rulers
other than Yasmakh-Adad.